Astronauts Throw Trash Into Space

MattSparkes writes "The International Space Station is home to an increasing amount of unwanted goods, and NASA has just approved a policy where these could be thrown out of the door into space. 'Tools and other gear have accidentally floated away during spacewalks. But NASA has shied away from intentionally jettisoning gear off the ISS in the past because of the threat of space junk hitting the station or other spacecraft.' The loosening of the rules on this comes just as Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin is about to take a space walk where he will hit a golf ball from the ISS in a promotional stunt for a golf company."

Comments

Method of keeping altitude

[Frans Faase]

What about installing a device to eject garbage in the direction of the earth, so that they will be burned in the atmosphere as this would also help the ISS to maintain altitude. I realize that the effect would be minimal, but yet all small things might help. Anyway ejecting materials towards is always better than just let them float away.

Re:Method of keeping altitude

[elvum]

The ISS needs boosting into a higher orbit periodically to avoid burning up anyway, so any rubbish they eject will burn up eventually. Ejecting rubbish in the direction of earth wouldn't help though - read up on the counter-intuitive nature of orbital mechanics :-)

I'd sell the trash...

[Takuryu]

... after all, one man's trash is another man's treasure (if you believe that saying). I know of a number of people who would pay what I consider to be a fair sum of money just to own something that had been _in space_.

Joking aside, how hard would it be to double-bag a few trash bags and keep the trash outside until a convenient "recovery" mission could come around?

Re:Randomly dump their trash would be stupid

[Noryungi]

They could pack their trash and, with minimal thrust, send it on a quick reentry path in which it will burn in higher atmosphere a few days or weeks later.

Exactly, there is no reason not to incinerate their trash. I can't believe this is 2006, people have been going into space for more than 40 years now, and they still are throwing trash overboard even though they know the danger. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Re:Randomly dump their trash would be stupid

[SysKoll]

They could pack their trash and, with minimal thrust, send it on a quick reentry path in which it will burn in higher atmosphere a few days or weeks later.

Yeah, because see, all these rocket scientists, they are well known for bein' stoopid. Ain't that a shame to pollute them purty stars.

SARCASM_MODE=OFF

If all you needed to deorbit something thrown from the ISS was a "small amount of thrust", don't you think that atmospheric drag would have already deorbitted the ISS itself?

In order to deorbit something, you need a very considerable amount of thrust, with an engine and propellant brought up from Earth at enormous cost. Left to its own device, a low-density object such as a bag of trash is going to slowly lose altitude due to atmospheric drag, then burn. No need for propellants. Good old air envelope does the trick.

As for reusing it, I'm afraid that a sizeable fraction of the trash is, er, astronaut dung. I doubt the reuse value of human waste is very high in space, until we have complete hydroponic gardens.

there is no reason not to incinerate their trash.

Incinerate? Whaaa?? Look, this is space, ok? Having a simple combustion chamber working in space would be a major, major physics achievement. There is no convection, so flames don't behave as expected. There are whole experiments studying a simple candle flame in space.

Never mind the fact that you'd need oxygen and fuel, brought from Earth at enormous cost, to burn wet waste.

The only way to incinerate things in space practically would be with a electric plasma arc, which in turn would requires a really large energy input. So until the ISS flies several isotope generators, there will be no such thing.

Remember, these decisions are made by people who actually know what's going on. The only problem is that they obviously don't communicate their reasons, since Slashdot readers -- Slashdot readers! -- feel compelled to call them stupid.