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Debris is Shuttle's Biggest Threat
Masq666 writes "Tiny rocks, paint flecks and other fragments of junk whizzing around the Earth pose the greatest threat to the shuttles and the astronauts on board, according to the preliminary results of a new NASA risk study.
Even coin sized fragments can cause great damage to a shuttle, and the damage can be lethal, if it hits the windows or the heat shield."
Holy crap! You mean debris traveling at thousands of kilometers per hour is hazardous to a vehicle that's also taveling at thousands of kilometetrs an hour? Seems to me this was already known and isn't a danger only to the shuttle but to anything in orbit.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
Of course little bits of rock are probably more of a threat than big bits of rocks. Sure the big ones might make a dent but the surface area of a small one is much less and therefore much more likely to make a puncture mark.
Or as one of my university professors once said
"When you are travelling faster than a rifle bullet, its a bit of an issue when you hit something that is the size of a rifle bullet"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Didn't you ever see Apollo 13? Haise pees into a relief tube in one scene and then activates the urine dump, looks out the window and says "The constellation Urion..."
... but NASA transcripts sort of bear that out as well.
Later in the movie they said that they couldn't make any more waste dumps because even that small vector would serve to push them off course.
Of course, it's a movie...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Several years ago I partook in an online discussion regarding the future of space flight, hosted by Jerry Pournelle (sci-fi writer and hobnobber with NASA people.) Prior to my question being posed, a female assistant asked me what my question was, and I voiced something along the lines of 'doesn't all the debris accumulating in orbit amount to a danger' then I posed to question to Jerry and he poo-poo'd my worries with some analogy of a coconut in the pacific ocean. (He did seem to overlook the idea that the analogous coconut would be moving at a few miles per second and could really ding a ship with such some force) .
Afterwards I told the female assistant I thought he was a daft bugger. She told me he was smarter than I thought and she was his wife.
A few months later the infamous paint-chip nearly punctured a shuttle window.
I don't think Jerry was the only one who didn't get it, I've felt there was a valid concern about doing our utmost to limit orbital debris. At the time there was alleged to be a catalog of 8,000+ known objects in orbit, including a power screwdriver. That last item could easily doom a shuttle.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Maybe this is the kick in the pants that NASA, ESA, JSA, and others need to ensure that they stop leaving junk up there.
Satellites and other space-borne objects need to be equipped with some means of safely deorbiting them, or else we're soon going to find that putting anything up in orbit and having it say there unharmed will be nigh on impossible.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
You did read the tidbit that pointed out it would be cheaper to build a NEW Hubble based on the same plans, upgrade it before launch and launch it, then to do a repair mission to it, all things considered, right? Personally, if they put money into "hubble" it should be Hubble 2, as we could get a LOT more years out of a rebuilt one than with a repaired old one.
On a side note, I'm not sure why the government doesn't take a "mars rover" approach to more space missions, building and launching more than one of the same craft, and launch them one week apart. This would have saved all the science on the previous (doomed) mars lander, as they would have messed up on the first one, realized their mistake, and landed the second one with adjusted calculations. The incremental cost for a second or third craft will be MUCH lower than the first one, and potentially twice the science can be had from them (think being able to look at two objects instead of one with two hubbles).
We're still in the very early stages of spaceflight. It's still dangerous, and it will continue to be dangerous for decades to come. And debris in orbit is only a small factor. The Challenger wasn't hit by debris in space. Neither was Columbia for that matter. Should we stop going into space because of some debris? No. Should we stop going because of the other dangers? I'll tell you what, if we come to a point where the astronauts who are risking their lives, decide it's too dangerous, then I'll start to listen. After all, they're more acquainted with the exact nature of the dangers they face than any civilian or politician (John Glenn excepted).
You want to talk dangerous, go be a soldier in Iraq. That's dangerous. Why don't we outlaw wars, particularly unjustified, needless ones.
And while we're on the topic of dangerous, let's talk about automobiles? They're not a great deal safer than the space shuttle.. Why don't we actually make driving tests difficult in the U.S. and outlaw people who can't drive? That will really save lives.
Space flight is certainly not going to get safer if we stop doing it. The only way to improve is to just continue doing it and making improvements as we learn. Will some astronauts die? Of course. And they know that. It's the risk they signed up for. Why not let them be the ones to decide whether or not it's worth it.
"At 1/5 the speed of light, dust and atoms might not do significant damage even in a voyage of 40 years, but the faster you go, the worse it is - space begins to become abrasive. When you begin to approach the speed of light, hydrogen atoms become cosmic-ray particles, and they will fry the crew. So 60,000 kilometers per second may be the practical speed limit for space travel."
This has been a problem for the last 40 years and, as far as I know, hasn't suddenly become any worse.
Anyway all objects > 10cm are currently being tracked and catalogued by USSPACECOM radar. I guess eventually we'll reach a point where blasting these debris out of orbit with an Earth or space based laser will become a necessity.
I have in fact been in simulator training for just this job for the last 10 years, and as an added bonus I am also able to accurately hit those bloody annoying UFOS that make the woo woo woo noise.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.