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NASA's Skylab $400 Littering Fine Paid By DJ
astroengine writes "Space Disco speaks with a Californian radio DJ about his role in raising, and paying, NASA's 30-year old littering fine levied by a Western Australian town. Skylab parts fell on Esperance in 1979, but the space agency's refusal to pay $400 has resulted in an entertaining annual grudge. Now the Barstow radio DJ is guest of honor at this weekend's 30th anniversary celebrations in Oz and the two small towns at opposite ends of the Pacific will be twinned... all because Skylab had a messy re-entry..."
If you don't want America's garbage raining down on you, you are going to have to defeat us on the field of battle.
What's that? You haven't printed trillions of dollars to build up an absurdly capable military?
I suggest you grab a helmet and dig yourself a bunker, mate.
This story reads like a Simpsons' episode.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
NASA needs DJs to raise $400 for a littering fine applied 30 years ago.
I have been to Barstow, a hot hot hot overgrown truck stop in the middle of California's central valley.
This genius found a way to escape to australia for a bit, kudos to him.
music lover since 1969
Do they also give fines for littering to people who wreck their cars and leave debris on the side of the road? I don't mean the whole car, but stuff like smashed headlights and windows.
"The Y chromosome is genetic. The odds are very good that if you are male then your father was too." -Internet Commenter
Just wait till they DeOrbit ISS in 2016. I think I know where the "miscalculated" orbit might end up.
I expect the headline "Small New Zealand town vaporized as a result of Kilometer-Mile error made computing the ISS re-entry trajectory."
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
crashes has such negative connotations. NASA prefers you use the term terrestrial parking. Thanks!
Being from Fresno, CA, I completely agree. Also, Barstow isn't in the central valley. Central valley ends out near Bakersfield, and Barstow is a bit more southeast from there towards Vegas.
What about the accrued interest on the fine? I also wonder, if they had not dropped the fine, could there have been some sort of arrest warrant, and who would've been the one to arrest?
The ISS doesn't have the power budget to get out of earth orbit. De-orbit will definitely mean controlled re-rentry. It really won't be that hard, since they'll surely be able to do it in pieces.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
I had to comment, just because it's pretty damn rare for my hometown to get a mention anywhere, let along on Slashdot :P
This was a pretty big event at the time - Nasa had a team of people on the ground and were aksing for bits of debris to be bought in for analysis. My mother took a few pieces in and forgot about it, several months later they sent them back mounted on a nice wall plaque identifying which part of the space station it was from :)
Pretty sure Fresno's on that list, too. All hellholes.
Foreign governments don't pay their parking tics in NYC or Washington either mainly because they don't have to. Diplomatic immunity bars local gov from messing with them. Also It would be interesting to send a FOIA request to NASA to see if the town ever went through proper diplomatic channels to make a claim against the US gov.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
So I started to read the article and immediately thought "oh yeah, I remember when that came down". Then I read the part about the 30yr Anniversary. Damn I am getting old.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
You mean like this example from NASA's own site? I found that in 15 seconds on google.
Where do you think they would send the ISS? A Lagrange point? Please.
It is going to be thrown away just after it is complete. I think it is sick, but they have been talking about this ever since the 1990's. I remember reading about this planned destruction at age 12 in Popular Science--even before they had launched the first component. I was very disgusted with our "progress" in space exploration, then as now.
if i had read the fine print, i'd certainly have paid the $400. hell i could recoup the cost by ebaying just one chunk of that thing. theres 300 million people in amreica, millions of whom would pay a good chunk of coin to own a piece of a space station. one mans trash...
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
Then maybe there is something to be said about having a uniform code of law, on a global basis.
Not that it's likely to happen in our lifetimes.
While we're at it, we could put caps on damage awards, too.
You do realize that my comment was meant in jest?
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
So he goes to Western Australia, a hot hot hot overgrown truck (road train) stop on the edge of Australia.
"Anonymous could not immediately be reached for further comment." - International Business Times
They probably did, but local councils like to maximise their revenue opportunities.
Read this as an example. The fine was a joke. Jimmy Carter called the local roadhouse to apologise. They probably had the whole population of Balladonia around the phone.
USA hasn't been in a war since the civil war.
You lie! I distinctly remember the Soviets invading back in the 80's. And it didn't even take our army to defeat them, just Patrick Swayze and a plucky bunch of teenagers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.