Space Station Turning Into a Trash Heap

quintin3265 writes "Apparently, the International Space Station is becoming overloaded with junk, stored among other places in a now unused airlock. Since shuttles aren't visiting the station, the station's occupants can't return broken machines to Earth. Furthermore, the only way they can dispose of trash and human waste is by loading these items in Russian cargo ships that burn up in the atmosphere."

Comments

nasa.ebay.com

[RobertB-DC]

Seriously, who *wouldn't* pay good money for "actual NASA-certified space junk"? Rutan had to have his people guarantee *not* to sell the ballast on the X-Prize flights, so clearly he thinks there's a market.

If NASA can't sell space junk, then Congress needs to give them the ability to do so. It makes sense that you can't find another piece of the Shuttle in East Texas and sell it... it makes no sense that you can't take a blob of solder melted in space and sell *that*.

Re:That explains....

[AKAImBatman]

Eventually of course, everything in orbit will re-enter the atmosphere

Duck! The sky... err... moon is falling!

Not.

Things must fall out of Low Earth Orbit because there's friction from thin atmosphere that slows them down. In higher orbital planes, there's very little to cause a satellite (artificial or natural) to slow down.

Romanticized science fiction

[sarcastro73]

It's difficult to get public support for research in space when they routinely encounter such problems. People expect Star Trek and are disappointed when real space ventures must deal with more down to earth problems as "Where do we store all the garbage?" No one ever used a toilet on the Enterprise.

Re:what??

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Depends on the direction- launch it in the same orbital plane, but forward, adds momentum and it moves into a higher orbit. Launch it BACKWARDS in the same orbital plane and it would simply spiral in, and be going slow enough not to skip off the outer atmosphere.

Re:No you can't just chuck the junk into space.

[rco3]

Actually, Greg, two objects traveling at 27,300 kph and impacting each other might not damage each other at all. Like, say, if they're travelling in the same direction? The key, here, is the relative velocity between the two objects. If you dump it out the airlock with no serious acceleration, it's just going to stay in orbit with you. When it hits you again, it won't hit very hard. Problem is, neither will it leave orbit and fall down. THAT's why you can't just dump stuff out the airlock.

Re:what??

[SurgeonGeneral]

they should have thought about it in the first place, and brought back unneeded stuff during each trip at the time, rather than letting junk build up.

This is indicative of the general situation about space travel. As the populous of nations that make journeys to space, we should be embarrassed and distraught. The last 40 years of space travel have been stale and unproductive, despite huge rises in government expenditure and GNP.

The failure of the International Space Station is an embarressment for humankind in general. Not only does it show that we cant work together as a species in one of the most important areas with one of the highest productive scientific potentials ever, but it shows that people in general (Especially politicians) care only about themselves. Knowledge and progress mean nothing to politicians and the general population. Instead we spend trillions incarcerating each other, giving corporations tax breaks and polluting the environment. It is perhaps ironic that the fruits of space travel would solve many of our problems, most importantly THE ENVIRONMENT (the single most important thing that ANYONE should care about) and creation of jobs (of almost equal important)

Space travel used to be a matter of national pride. As self esteem and pride goes down the toilet, and as politicians fight wars against drugs and "terror" (Is anyone REALLY terrified?) no one seems to care anymore.