Space Station & Shuttle Evade Debris

T.Hobbes writes: "There's an article at the BBC about the shuttle had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid the close (5km) transit of some rocket debris, and how the fuel consumed has cut short the shuttle's stay in orbit by one day. NASA also has an article about it." I know that minor maneuvers are common, but this one seems like a rather major move. Anyone want to bet on how long it will be before we have to establish some sort of clean-up effort in space?

Comments

You need funding to clean up space.

[MongooseCN]

I'm sure politicians will only realize how much we need to clean up space after a shuttle crew dies from a collision with space debris. I mean right now our money is much better spent on that missle defence system. I mean after Sept 11th it's clearly missles we need to defend against, right?

Deflectors

[BlueCoder]

I would have thought that NASA and the US government would have designed space deflectors by now. Thrusting robots that deflect debris into the atmosphere or collect it depending on the circumstances.

It's shocking that the space industry is so affected by simple debris. It's a wonder one of the middle eastern countries have not tried to build orbital rockets whose only purpose is to blow up when they get there. They have lots of money and their engineers are not incompetent. One properly armed missle could create a whole cascade effect. It's would totally devistate our economy and take out spy and targeting satelites all at once. There might be secret lasers or particle cannons in space that might be able to hit rockets but they could always say they are launching a satelite. Scary how vulnerable we are.

WTF

[Ubi_NL]

don't you READ the parent mail?? It clearly states three possible solutions to evade without a shuttle docked. As it says in THAT email, non of these methods was shown to be dedicated for evasive actions
get your head out of your ass