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3.5 Ton Satellite to Crash Back to Earth
DeadBugs writes "CNN is reporting that the NASA Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer could crash back to earth in a matter of days. It's estimated that up to 9 large pieces (4-100 lbs.) of the Satellite could survive re-entry. Unlike the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory that was guided in, this Satellite will be uncontrolled. The EUVE has only been up there since 1992.... I wonder when this sort of thing will start to be a more common event."
I wonder if they can predict what the "catchment area" of the debris is going to be.. -keshto
Hey, Nothing beats flying debris hitting your back yard on a saturday afternoon.... Maybe you can sell the wreckage on e-bay and make a fortune.. ;-)
Did NASA think they had to get hip to the 90's X-games obsession or something? Take ultraviolet measurements WHILE SNOWBOARDING!
Where is it and what do we win if it hits.
...that some joker will have a piece of it up for auction on e-bay before the derbis has cooled.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
This is likely to become far more common. More and more old satellites are being shut down, and people tend to spend their satellite funding on running and using the satellite, not bringing it down safely. Maybe i should start selling insurance....
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
Better get my pillows...
Crashing so soon?
What version of Windows was it running?
the key is falling
Hasn't this already become a common event?
I think I'm going to be building a kevlar/titanium umbrella, just to be on the safe side.
.sdrawkcab si gis siht
time to hit yahoo for some pillows!
;-}
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Gir exclaims Yayyyyyyy! We're doomed!
This is amusing in that car-wreck sort of way. Who wants to bet that when this crashes on Mrs. Tingle's Rose Garden in Bummsville, Idaho and there's a lot of media attention, that the government is gonna spend lots of money to go up there and give these things emergency navigation systems so that they can easily fall on unsuspecting sea mammals instead of J. Random Human?
Karma: Non-Heinous
Think we'll get lucky and it'll come down on a certain building in Redmond? Probably not, but we can dream, can't we?
I hope it lands on my house. I could sell the movie rights for it. Then we can have a whole series of movies about huge satellites returning threatening all life as we know it.
Wait, wasnt that what one of the blob movies was about?
can you imagine the children??? god save us all
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I missed out last time, I suggest this time that Taco Bell uses a target the size of Rhode Island. I really, really want a Taco.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"The probability of the few EUVE surviving pieces falling into a populated area and hurting someone is very small," said Ronald Mahmot" Yes the probability is small, but wouldn't that be a sucky day? Im serious, lets PLAN for these things to happen so that we can make sure it WON'T fall in a populatd area at all....
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&o
Its one thing to continuously crash things into Mars, we all hate those damn Martian scum anyways... But now we are talking about Earth! Stop forgetting about your unit conversions or carrying the 1, or else someone might get hurt!
Will my insurance company consider this an "act of God" and try to weasel me out of a big fat check? ;p
Hell, I don't even think insurance covers this sort of thing.
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
I can tell you right now that if one of those pieces falls in my back yard, I'll rebuild it and have a webserver running on it with the new Lego set I just bought by the next day...
Falling rocks from the sky? Is this the Art Bell show or something? I wonder if we could target the ./ effect towards Art's web site so he could experience a falling web server.
Good to see that she is married, if she was doing that with anyone other than her husband then it would just be sinfull. Nice to see people still have morals today
This is definitely *not* an "act of God." So I wonder if my insurance policy will cover if it comes down on my house, car, wife, dog (just kidding - I don't have a dog)
with the number of objects we've put into orbit around our planet at an all time high and increasing constantly this will become more and more common. logic dictates that ultimately these things will make land in someone's yard (living room, white house, etc.).
the real problem here is what to do about it...
i propose using defunct home Internet appliances as projectiles. it would be extremely inexpensive and, when fired from a railgun at speeds in excess of 30,000ft/sec, these little beauties could easily eliminate a chunk of space debris weighing 100 or more lbs.
I'd love to have a beowulf cluster of burning satellite pieces!!! ;-)
... I wonder when this sort of thing will start to be a more common event.
</snip>
-- when NASA starts using Windows for their onboard systems, I can imagine they would crash all the time.
Q: What costs millions of dollars to produce and is guaranteed to crash back to earth?
A: ABC's new Fall line-up...
Crashing like my Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server High Availability Cluster.
This reminds me of an article on BBSpot:
Mir Hits Taco Bell, Kills Four
Funny stuff.
Or do they mean no FUNCTIONAL onboard steering system? I don't know of many satellites that don't include manuvering thrusters. Orbits decay naturally and require slight adjustments over time.
Of course, it WAS described as defunct, so I suppose I can give them some leeway on that.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
OK... so these things have a fairly limited and predictable life span. And there's thousands of good sized objects up there that WILL fall(what goes up must come down, unless you put it waaaay up there)
:)
There REALLY should be a way to contoll the destruction better, instead of just letting it drop. Granted making it drop might be better, but this thing will still have some pretty good chunks hitting the ground. Why not design them to break up or be broken up more thoroughly. Somewhat similar to what an Indy Car does when hitting a wall.
Putting explosives and the like would be somewhat risky, and designing weaknesses into the stucture might weaken it. But, having a 200lb chunk nail my house at mach 6 wouldn't be the best either
it was probably not geosynchronous...
Could you design a sattelite in such a way that it could be destroyed remotely, ie. blown into small chunks that pose no danger to other spacecraft (are "blasted" towards Earth and therefore certain disintegration), while maintaining stability during launch/operation and not adding too much to the total weight?
Devil's advocate:
Who'd enforce it? Corporations won't pay extra for a very unlikely liability problem (until such a time that we're lobbing dozens of big things into space daily)
What circumstances (other than system failure) would cause you to push the button - and if it had failed, who's to say it's pointed the right way and you won't shoot your comsat into the ISS?
Sorry - just thinking out loud...IANARS
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
Actually, debris entering the atmosphere (man-made and not) is a common occurrence. Happens everyday on some scale. It isn't just everyday a 3.5 ton one comes down :)
I believe US Space Command/NASA/NORAD spends a ton of time tracking objects in close orbit, even very small ones the size of your finger.
After all, anything going 17500 miles per hour hitting something like the space shuttle or Hubble or any other satellite (GPS, communications, spy/defense) wouldn't be pretty.
Someone who worked for NASA at MSFC told me that they have actually had astronauts on the space shuttle change the shuttle's orbit slightly in order to avoid certain large pieces of debris.
- Nothing is true, everything is permitted
Perhaps they should keep a supply of fuel that is not to be used up on any circumstances... other than when the satellite is crashing of course.
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. -- Mark Twain
Just fucking great, something is going to fall from the sky, we have no idea where. I have a date tommorrow night, I knew something was going to spoil it. My fuckin luck.
/. reader can get chicks, occasionally.
Yes, even a
OK.
:)
:)
If this DOES start to happen with higher frequency the Star Wars will save us... right?
We don't have anything to worry about because George W. is going to protect us from this stuff.
It would be a REALLY great scandal.
Bush and his defense contractor friends are not counting on anything actually happening. If something comes down and causes any damage this would put a BIG red mark on his face.
Kevin
I am not an engineer but.....
I'll understand it if nasa puts up a 500 lb satalite, or even a 1 ton satalite that has such a short lifespan. But come on. at 3.5 tons they couldn't have fitted it with at least enough energy collecting equipment to keep the thing in orbit?
Sure the equipment was dated, and some it probably worn out, but whats the real harm of leaving it up there and using it for parts or salvage for future missons?
Is the feasibility of making/expanding/fixing a space station out of these defunct satalites so remote?
Granted using parts of old satalites to fix or augment current satalites or stations would require them to be designed as such from the beginning. Still I would think the idea isn't origonal, or too far fetched to acheive.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Will Taco Bell put another target up and offer free tacos if it hits?
If they don't will CmdrTaco do it? Come on Malda I only live in Grand Rapids! Give us free tacos!
Think about this: the US military sends up approx. 10-20 satellites a year into space, and have you ever heard of them telling us when one is coming down? You can bet they try their hardest to keep any information from us, even if it threatens the public safety.
:)
I'm sure they probably count on the odds that they crash over water, or some unpopulated area, and not notify anyone beforehand. Or if it does get hit something, they'll attribute it to some plane part falling off...
I know there's not a whole lot we can do about it ... but couldn't the media have given us a bit more warning. It's less than 30 hours from the CNN article to the earliest estimated reentry time.
NASA's original press release was on the 16th Feb.
Even that is a bit worrying. Did NASA only discover 11 days ago that their 3.5 tonne satellite was going to crash? It's not like they behave erratically, is it?
For being the #1 space program, we sure as hell can't keep a satellite up there for long.
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
Has anyone here ever been gang-raped by the Slashdot crew?
-Foxxz
Gotta love a 3.5ton bbq in your backyard.
This sounds like a great opportunity to run another test of the National Missile Defense system.
Better yet, let's turn it into an X-Game type competition between the BMDO and National Skeet Shooting Association to see who can hit the first/most chunk(s).
wouldn't this be a cheap way to test the new system, at least it would give NASA an excuse it hadn't used before.
"It blew the F$#@! up, only this time we know why!"
I get it. It's a joke about Windows. The punchline is that Windows crashes all of the time, so if NASA used Windows on the satellites, they would crash all of the time.
+5 for originality!
EUVE Home (UCal. Berkeley)
Info on satellite tracking here. Track the orbit, and place bets on where it will land. (note, the farthest north is someplace in florida.)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Since the odds of someone shooting an ICBM at the US are pretty low, we could use SDI to protect us from thi instead. I mean they spend billions of dollars on it, it better be good for something.. right?
-AC
If they could control this thing and bring it down when and where they wanted they could potentially do some interesting stuff. Like having it streak over the opening ceremonies at the Olympics. Or if the had REALLY fine control they could light the olynpic calderon with it instead of using the torch. That would be even better than the flaming arrow. Or they could drop it on Bin Laden's head. Ok, now I am getting silly.
ps I am bitter because I submitted this exact article and had it rejected several hours before it appeared.
Lasers Controlled Games!
If gravity is formed by areas of extreme density, I'm putting my money on it landing in Redmond.
Please hit our provincial government, please hit our provincial government, please hit our provincial government.
Amen.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
All of one page. Gee...where can I get me some of that fancy web design?
...as The Extreme Ultraviolent Exploder
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Its okay guys..really. Bruce Willis and his buddies are training right now. There is no cause for worry!
I wonder when this sort of thing will start to be a more common event."
/my/ house, but since we can't really make sure everyone sticks around to deal with their space litter (hello USSR?), I'm not sure what other options are available.
Considering the amount of space junk in orbit and the clutter and risk it represents, it's nice to see that some of this stuff is finally exceeding its orbital lifespan and is reentering.
Of course, I'm not sure I'd want it ending up on
*scoove*
Are you just sitting around with nothign to do?
Do you want to talk with an interesting intelligent
woman from nevada, call 800-618-8255 from 8:00 p.m.
to 12:00 p.m. and ask for Arte Belle!
She even has a website here...
My rental/apartment insurance in NYC *did* have provisions for man-made satellites trashing my pad. In fact, I was covered for most any missle-like object unless it was during wartime or if it was nuclear.
Crashing so soon?
What version of Linux w/Gnome is it running?
:-)
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
i don't really know how all of the legal angles work when it comes to NASA's liability - but here's my theroy:
lets assume this satalite hits a house - the cost of a lawsuit/repairs/etc are FAR less than building in some sort of self destruction devices, and paying people to maintain such a thing. i think the NASA people are just taking their chances hoping it lands in the ocean or in an unpopulated area, and if not - they're prepared to pay whatever the cost may be.
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
do terrorists make crappy satellites?
I didn't know CowboyNeal was currently in space! Must be one of those space tourists that paid the Russians $20 million...
The satellite is expected to land in Quassy, an uninhabited part of the Australian Outback.
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
>Self-destruct mechanisms as a design feature for all sattelites...
/. in the past over deorbiting a still operational satellite. Well, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY DO IT? Purely to avoid this situation.
As afidel wrote above (I'd mod him up if I had any points now), you don't want to do this to a defunct satellite.
As you point out, it would have to pose no danger to other spacecraft. Well, the only practical way to do that is to ditch it in a controlled fashion. Any explosion involves a release of energy in pretty much all directions. Although some shaping of the charge can control the blast, you still blast some pieces in every direction. Each piece that does not hit the atmosphere enters its own orbit - risking collision with some other satellite.
The proper solution, employed by almost all responsible satellite designers, is to allow enough extra fuel to deorbit the satellite. Of course, this depends on having CONTROL of the satellite. To guarantee this requires more redundancy - and more weight and fuel and complexity, etc. At the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a pound for launch costs, the designers usually opt for mission-suitable redundancy, and hope (and pray) that all the systems don't fail before they DO deorbit. And if they do start failing unusually fast, they'll deorbit early to avoid this kind of fiasco.
Kind of ironic - I've seen some griping on
You can't have it both ways, folks!
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
wait, the "Compton" satellite had a guidence system, but the EXTREME ULTRAVIOLET EXPLORER!!!1 didn't?
how the fuck are you a Extreme Explorer and don't have a guidence system, but a poor predominatly black neighbour hood does? roofle owned NASA.
For sale: Left over satellite pieces. Once payment has been received the general locations of the pieces will be sent to you. Bid now to ensure prompt delivery of location information.
And found an article on the satellite crashing. It doesn't go into much detail but covers much of what the CNN story is missing. I thought it might be interesting to some. It can be found right here.
I find it somewhat disturbing that in the year 2002, after we've put men on other planets, taken photos of galaxies millions of light years away and split the atom, we cannot determine the path of a plummeting object.
CNN (and other sources including NASA) are reporting a 9 hour window on when it could fall. With all the scientific minds and all the great algorithms we have, we can't determine when something like this will happen? Or is it that unimportant to bother getting out the slide rule and doing some calculations? And then there's where. A 1000 mile path that nobody seems to have any clue where it might land. We can't figure out a simple trajectory?
Doesn't this disturb anyone that chunks of metal up to 100lbs is going to be dropping on our heads shortly? True, the chances of getting hit are probably a billion to one, but they say that about lightning as well. Well, it'll be a fun light show and we can always hope it lands in Redmond or somewhere insignifigant.
liB
The government is constantly getting in to trouble testing out their missles and other fun stuff...
This is the perfect time for them to test out some of their goods (i.e. anti-missle defense type stuff)...And at the same time prevent a rainstorm of 100lb metal bits.
And no one can complain about their weapon use because it can be written off as saving lives (or something...).
... starlight, starbright, first star I see toni ... *thud*
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Yet space agency scientists said there is little risk because most of the doomed satellite will burn up in the atmosphere.
at least a little of the sattelite is going to end up hitting the earth, and it's going to be DAMN HOT!
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory had a requirement from inception to have a controlled reentry. Significantly, work started on it just a few years after the Skylab incident and NASA was probably concerned about dropping any more large objects on Australia. AFAIK nothing else currently in orbit has any reentry requirements. The ISS may, but I don't know about it.
Here are some stats for comparison
Being killed in a car accident: one in 5,300
Being a drowning victim: one in 20,000
Choking to death: one in 68,000
Being killed in a bicycle accident: one in 75,000
Being killed by lightning: one in 2 million
Being killed by falling debris from a satellite: one in 4 million
Dying from a bee sting: one in 6 million
Winning the current Power Ball Jackpot of $10 million dollars: one in 80 million
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
3.5 ton hunk of of titanium, known to withstand massive a high amount of heat and shock. A few minor dents. Good luck!
bush should test his ass-clown missle defense shit on the falling satilite. he could feature the footage of the miss in the next star wars movie. then he could go home in his flying car and talk on the space telephone to more enron employees. if BTS was in charge of operation induring freedom, our next target would be comoros. those bastards need to be taken out.
Can you tell me where a piece of paper dropped off a skyscraper will land?
The weather in low earth orbit is just as unpredictable as the weather at the ground, and just as variable. The density of the atmosphere around satellites (and thus the drag force on them) can vary by an order of magnitude. If the satellite loses orientation (which it is essentially certain to as drag forces overcome tidal or powered stabilization) then its coefficient of drag changes as well, and unpredictably when it rotates. It may not even have just drag acting on it; even in orbit an angled surface can produce just as much lift as drag, and when the satellite hits the atmosphere its shape could produce more lift than drag.
And of course, for every second by which the atmosphere delays reentry, the satellite has moved 5 miles in its orbit. 5 mi/s * 3600 s/hr * 9 hr gives a nice 160,000 mile strip of possible landing sites, crossing around and around the whole globe. If you'd like to gamble about the probability of something being hit by one of the chunks, though, I suggest placing your money on "no".
Considering how much it costs to send a pound of anything into space, it's too bad they couldn't just send it into geostationary orbit maneuver it to where a space station could get at it so they'd at least have the spare parts/metal up there.
Of course, my closet is full of old computer parts, so you see how I think.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
What goes up, must come down.
Dude, it's freaking Skyfall Day! They actually had a block party for that sorta thing. I really wish some network would re-run the series again. it r00ld.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
I applaud NASA for making a $100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.00 and 5,000,000,000 ton satellite smash back into the surface of the Earth, kicking up trillions of megatons of dust, covering up the entire sky, and causing every living thing on all the Earth to die. The Bible calls this day Armeggadon, the end of all things.
...Ooooooooh well... Maybe I just need another beer.
NEGRA MODELO! BECAUSE GUINESS SUCKS!
Oh well.
Then again, they *do* exclude nuclear attack, so who knows
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Track the current satellite position on this Heavens-Above page. You'll see that the orbit is confined between 28 N and 28 S. Note that heavens-above doesn't compute reentry, but the position should be pretty accurate until the very last moment.
Space junk deorbits all the time. It just doesn't get the same publicity, some of the junk includes upper stage boosters including tons of fuel and a payload. The amount of rock naturally falling out of the sky is still more than the deorbiting garbage but nobody seems to worry about that, despite it destroying the occasional roof or car like these incidents:
/ pe rseids_shower_sidebar_000809.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy
give it to russians, the know how to dump it down :)
Could all of those people who built Y2K shelters have a chance at mocking those who didn't?
i didnt know he was an actor!
They just bring it down on a cave/bunker in Afghanistan. If hits terrorists, say it was a well planned and executed attack, otherwise deny it, or say "whoops", it was an accident.
In no event shall the designers of the satellite be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption; destruction of cities, countries, continents; death of all humans) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this satellite, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.
Do you yahoo?
Heres hoping it hits somewhere in the outback.
...in geosynchronous orbit. They're big. Of course they're 23,000 miles up, too.
Sheesh - THINK.
The International Space Station is at an altitude of 400 km. Geostationary orbits are more like 36000 km, which is far beyond the reach of the Space Shuttle, which would be the logical (i.e., only) choice for collecting space debris and transporting it to ISS.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Did you know that just about all countries send
up thousands and thousands of weatherbaloons
in the sky, every day. And you dont hear them
killing people left and right?
That is metal intstruments that weights a few
pounds. Hitting the ground in 200-300km/h
that is more then enough to kill a man or
destroy a car etc. etc.
So, I guess it wont be such a big problem.
Now, or in the future.
afaik. there has been one or two incidents in
30 years in sweden of thoose landing in urban
areas.
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
DAMN! I thought it would be about Uranus :(
Cool, a female, so long I have wished to speak that word, and it is actually OK TO LOOK IT!
NASA's got a cool little Java applet you can play with to see the satellites and their orbits.
It's a simulation based on posted data, I gather, rather than any kind of tracker, and I'm sure there are dozens of black satellites not listed, but it's still very neat. You can zoom in/out and around the earth, pick specific satellites from categories, changes the time speed, etc. There's also all the favourites such as the shuttle (when it's up), the ISS, Mir, Hubble, COBE, etc. You can also load a web page with more info about any given satellite, such as when it was launched, what it carries, and so on.
Enjoy!
...
-- don't discount flying pigs until you have good air defense
I agree. However, this is extremely hard to enforce. What would the US government do if a foreign (Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French, you name it) satellite does not have this capability? 'Express their concerns' via diplomatic channels, or something less effective, I think. Clearly an international treaty would be required.
Many satellites are used for military purposes, and a reliable re-entry system would require reductions in the satellite payload and efficiency or increase the cost. I doubt most nations are not willing to let some international treaty to compromise their military interests. Considering the fate of the ABM treaty, it is pretty clear that United States is not one of them. Enforcing such a treaty efficiently would also require pre-launch inspections of all satellites, including the military ones. How many nations with space capabilities would allow this?
Due to orbital mechanics, it would take about 15tons of gas to move this 3.5 ton spacecraft into geosync orbit. Any when you get it there, it becomes like all those 5.25" floppy drives in your closet - i.e. obsolete, worn out and useless. i.e, the wrong sort of stuff. 3.5 tons of rocket propellent in GEO would be worth more than than the metal - many communication satellites up there eventually are retired due to running out of gas, even though the electronics has a few years life left in it. Remember, commsats are the only thing really making decent $$$ in space.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Are they going to try to crash it into Australia like the Russians tried with Mir?
...that this thing might hit Redmond?
Hey, this is slashdot!
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
Satellite Safety Tip #14: If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
I know I was amused.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
The highlight of the celebration was that each of the networks and others would intentionally down their retired satalites on the same night each year, producing an intentional light show of shooting stars (as seen from earth).
Silliness abound (inspired by the Skylab incident) about people walking around with metalic umbrellas and the like...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Why does Autralia always get to see all the fun stuff coming down from the sky? Nothing cool ever happens on North American skies!!
[alk]
Donna got hold of this fax that was sent to the press office from the OSF at NASA.
What, something falling out of the sky?
Yeah.
We get that fax once a week.
Yeah, but Donna doesn't know that. She thinks it's an emergency.
And you didn't want to tell her?
No, 'cause the other way you get a day's worth of entertainment without leaving the office.
She doesn't know that these things fall out of the sky all the time... once every ten days, as a matter of fact. Since the first year we started putting manmade objects in space 17 000 have come back, and remarkably not one person has been hit.
So I suppose there's an argument to be made that we're due.
Yeah.
Maybe the rocket scientists should create a Department of Unburned Chunk Kinematics or D.U.C.K. for short.
What great practice for when the next UFO comes around. Fire a non-nuclear ICBM at it - use it for the next 'missile shield' test - send up some Air Force fightes to blow it to bits...c'mon, armed forces people, use your heads...
i only made out two words in the news post
explorer and crash
and decided the article wasn't worth reading
The REAL question is if the band UVX will have to re-name themselves...
Half an hour after after the story posts, and some leach is crying "Can I sue them?". Why to go luser.
Forget laser guided missiles. Go after Bin Laden with old Satelites and save millions of dollars.
And at the same time, we might all get a Free Taco if Taco Bell marketers would be so kind as to mail Bin Laden a large target to place over his hideout.
I am
I can't help but be confused. You repeatedly hear about the high cost of sending stuff into orbit. It seems to me that a little investment in creating some kind of space junkyard of sorts might pay off.
The same thing goes with Mir. We hear about how the ISS is so far over budget, but how come we let Mir crash and burn rather then integrating it into the existing ISS plan? Even if we ripped out all of its guts and let the vacuum of space kill the fungus that was growing in it, thats still a whole hell of a lot of metal that could possibly be pressurized and turned into a living/labrotory space.
But whatever.
--tom
Contrary to what a lot of people are guessing, EUVE had no onboard thrusters or fuel of any kind, so there is no way to control re-entry. The re-entry has nothing to do with the decomissioning, and everything to do with the fact that atmospheric drag is finally bringing it down. EUVE would have lasted longer in a higher orbit, but those are much more expensive, and it just wasn't practical. This is the case for the vast majority of low earth orbitting satellites (and especially inexpensive astronomy statellites that aren't out to make a profit).
Satellites like EUVE can change their pointing by spinning reaction wheels -- that's how the telescope was pointed at different targets all over the sky -- but merely rotating the satellite around does nothing to affect when it's going to re-enter.
All I can say now is,
"There will be fireworks!" --Anon
...of hitting a populated area and killing someone is limited to a public apology and a blank check.
You want serious trouble? Just let one of those fallings shards hit a spotted owl and watch the fan get all messed up!!!
This is the very type of remark that I hope does not lead to lessening of accountability in the future. The probability of actually needing to use your airplane seat as a floatation device is also extremely small, but they spend the extra money to provide it, just in case. Let's not have a chunk of metal destroy an entire city block before we decide to regulate what gets shot up into space.
Extreme Ultraviolent Explorer, and all sorts of images started to form in my head, mostly related to Alex and his old droogs in combination with a (in)famous browser.
I'm pretty happy I read it wrong. Although Microsoft never seem to hesitate to give us "some of the old in-out-in-out" whenever we dare to walk in the wrong parts of town.
...if it were steerable how many Linux hackers would be trying to gain control of it so they could nudge it toward Redmond...
I wonder if NASA will be required to pay for any damages of uncontrolled reentries if they occur.
5. Aircraft, including self-propelled missiles and spacecraft.
Who knows, maybe my insurance company would go after the spacecraft designers/operators/whoever -- or, more likely, after their insurance agency.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Now we get to see if the ABM hit-to-kill system is working...
"All I do is eat and poop!" -- Bean
This could make for a good test of a missle defense system.
Of course I really have no clue where the debris will land, but it sure would be fun to watch!
Maybe i should start selling insurance
When SkyLab fell back in 1979, this was the first of this kind of incident. People were concerned. The news said that if you check your homeowner's policy it usually has coverage for falling spacecraft.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Just picture a new section in the news programs:
Satellite weather.
"... Better take your umbrellas today, cause we expect satellites rain today in the morning..."
Are these things planned? Why not build in some retro rockets so it can be controlled when and where it comes down?
What if we dropped some of our (non-existent) space junk on the continental US?
We're your allies
An Australian (who remembers SkyLab)
I wonder when this sort of thing will start to be a more common event.
I forget which Max Headroom episode it was, started off with bits of deorbited satellites coming down. In a celebration of some sort.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Nobody mentioned the obvious. Why can't these materials be recycled? Burning on re-entry isn't a very environmentally sound solution.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
NASA reports indicate that a 100lb piece of satellite traveling at 17000 mi/hr has a momentum of 8976*10^6 kg(m/s) :)
If this satellite's got MS in it, I'm amazed it stayed aloft this long 8)
- SBB
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Has the Senate already asked NASA/Huge Tech University to create some potential math in the area of potential risk to being beaned by reentry objects?
Even if they have, what is the size of 6ish Billion people compared to the complete land area. Assuming 1/3 to 1/2 are sleeping (more surface space) versus sitting or standing?
In this equation, would you rule out certain areas due to orbit types? Seems that fun could be had doing the math!
TIA,
PaGeN
When a Ball Dreams, It Dreams it's a Frisbee.
I think NASA should put up a remote controlled shuttle to grab these decaying satelites and push them off into space. NASA has no prob spending money on stuff. And this problem of satelites returning to earth will only become more common. - Bobby Mac
At 3.5 tons, this would be a '68 Buick doing re-entry instead of a Corvette. ~:D
Maybe this is that mythical guy that straped the RATO bottle to his car coming back to Earth?
With my current moderator status I was going to give this comment a clearly undeserved "fruitalicious" but then I wouldn't have been able to post to explain that it was just a joke...
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