Despite early number crunching that indicated a low risk of collision, astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to evacuate into the attached Soyuz module when a 5-inch piece of cast-off debris traveling almost 5.5 miles per second threatened to smack into the ISS earlier today.
There is an estimated 17,000 known pieces of space junk currently in orbit around the Earth, and this isn’t the first time a crew has had to take shelter. It may seem ridiculous to fear something that’s only 5 inches long — I’m struggling to prevent a “That’s what SHE said” joke from emerging — but pretty much anything traveling at nearly 6 miles per second will cause serious destruction. Especially to a structure that cost easily tens of millions of dollars to make.
NASA, your mandate is clear: develop destructive laser technology. Sure, the Star Wars Defense Initiative failed, but here’s an immediately practical application for a nice laser array. And seriously, 17,000 pieces of crap flying around up there? How can we even be thinking of sending civilian transports up to the moon and back for purposes of lunar resort vacationing? We need to bring back that commercial with the crying Native American guy standing by the side of the road as a piece of litter drops at his feet, flung by a passing driver. Or, wait, I guess a little green alien would be a better fit, but who knows what those guys think about all this? Maybe they just sit back and laugh when these things happen.
The moral of this story? Stay in school, kids. Do the math. An astronaut’s life might just depend on it. (The More You Know … rainbow … star!)
Comments
Kathy
March 13th, 2009 - 10:58:59 AM
Is there a way to pick up trash in space? If not, I can't imagine what a space war would do to our atmosphere. Something to think about!
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