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The Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility: Where Spacecraft Go To Die (bbc.com)
dryriver writes: Whether you launch a satellite into space or an entire space station like the Russian Mir, the Chinese Tiangong-1 or the International Space Station, what goes up must eventually come down -- re-enter earth's atmosphere. The greater the mass of what is in space -- Mir weighed 120 tons, the ISS weighs 450 tons and will be decommissioned in a decade -- the greater the likelihood that larger parts will not burn up completely during re-entry and crash to earth at high velocity. So there is a need for a place on earth where things falling back from space are least likely to cause damage or human casualties. The Oceanic Pole Of Inaccessibility is one of two such places.
The place furthest away from land -- it lies in the South Pacific some 2,700km (1,680 miles) south of the Pitcairn Islands -- somewhere in the no-man's land, or rather no-man's-sea, between Australia, New Zealand and South America, has become a favorite crash site for returning space equipment. "Scattered over an area of approximately 1,500 sq km (580 sq miles) on the ocean floor of this region is a graveyard of satellites. At last count there were more than 260 of them, mostly Russian," reports the BBC. "The wreckage of the Space Station Mir also lies there... Many times a year the supply module that goes to the International Space Station burns up in this region incinerating the station's waste." The International Space Station will also be carefully brought down in this region when its mission ends. No one is in any danger because of this controlled re-entry into our atmosphere. The region is not fished because oceanic currents avoid the area and do not bring nutrients to it, making marine life scarce.
The place furthest away from land -- it lies in the South Pacific some 2,700km (1,680 miles) south of the Pitcairn Islands -- somewhere in the no-man's land, or rather no-man's-sea, between Australia, New Zealand and South America, has become a favorite crash site for returning space equipment. "Scattered over an area of approximately 1,500 sq km (580 sq miles) on the ocean floor of this region is a graveyard of satellites. At last count there were more than 260 of them, mostly Russian," reports the BBC. "The wreckage of the Space Station Mir also lies there... Many times a year the supply module that goes to the International Space Station burns up in this region incinerating the station's waste." The International Space Station will also be carefully brought down in this region when its mission ends. No one is in any danger because of this controlled re-entry into our atmosphere. The region is not fished because oceanic currents avoid the area and do not bring nutrients to it, making marine life scarce.
something falls and scares the fish away
We've spent so much money building the ISS and they think it's ok to just let it fall into the ocean after melting into a hunk of metal?
What's the f*cking point of this at all? So we can say, "yeah at one time we had a livable tin can in the sky!"
Am I the only one who is infuriated by this? The ISS is our only viable space platform for anything and these short sighted dip $hits think it's a disposable research toy.
Anything we send up there should be thought of as being up there for damn good (unless it really is useless trash). It's an investment for the future even if it seems silly now. Build off of the damn thing FFS!
The region is not fished because oceanic currents avoid the area and do not bring nutrients to it, making marine life scarce.
Of course the currents "avoid" the area, spacecraft routinely rain down on it.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
and dumping spacecraft there risks angering the Great Old Ones
Bombing a lifeless void in the South Pacific with space junk....what could go wrong?
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The Earth isn't flat, it just looks that way.
Thanks for calling attention to this site. Never knew it existed.
When I look at the map I see an elliptical zone that is 19 degrees tall and twice that in length (that is too say, about 2000 km by 4000 km) in which there is exactly one vessel (a fishing vessel).
A bullseye in this zone would be at least 1000 km from any other vessels, except for that one fishing boat, and they could miss him by at least 500 km.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
"The Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility" sounds like the title of a prog-rock album.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Seems like a good place to dump vitrified radioactive waste.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Why 254 miles above the earth's surface, where there's still some atmospheric drag, you ask?
1) Minor reason... to keep down fuel costs of sending people+supplies up to it. The trade-off is fuel costs of constant burns to keep ISS in orbit.
2) Major reason... the lower Van Allen radiation belt begins approx 500 km (approx 300 miles) above the earth's surface. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... A moon mission (or beyond) would pass through the belts in a matter of hours; ditto for re-entry returning to earth. With sufficient shielding, you get the equivalant of a few whole-body X-rays. A 6-month mission inside the belts (i.e. above 300 miles) would probably be fatal.
Note that the belts trap charged particles, which would require shielding once you get beyond the belts. The Apollo lunar missions needed that extra sheilding. And that only sufficed for ordinary conditions. Had the sun had shot out a major solar flare pointed toward us during an Apollo mission, the astronauts would've been dead, no ifs, ands, ors, buts.
I'm not repeating myself
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If the region is not too deep, I am betting many spy mission went there on many side to try to see if a few military satellite could not be fished out of the bunch...
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There is definitely a constant recurring cost of keeping it up there (it keeps falling down so it needs fuel)...but it costs millions to bring up anything to even this LEO...
So is it not worth maintaining even the structure of ISS? For storage space, lab space, food cultivation?
Is it perhaps the effort of maintaining it cooled, heated, aired and sealed?
4wdloop
Why isn't there a "+1 Pedantic" option :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Because it has mass -- to move it will still require a proportionately appropriate amount of force.
Weight is caused by the effect of gravity upon mass (mass is in kilograms, weight is in Newtons). Any object in free-fall has no weight (as g is 0 at that moment in time), hence why astronauts on the ISS can 'float'.
Have a read of this book, specifically the essay "The man who massed the earth": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
...have a bunch of moldy garbage that your children need to clean up and dispose of when you die.
We are only now beginning to realize that dumping trash from our coastal cities into the seas is not a good idea. How much longer to realize the same about space trash?
Abort to sun.
And why are we dumping our trash on their heads . .. . . . .
So basically, instead of mundane Dynamite Blast Fishing, you go Orbital Re-entry Blast Fishing ?
Man that's quite a level of awesomeness.
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There's actually atmospheric drag on the ISS such that, without periodic corrections, will drag it down out of orbit. That's true of ANY low earth orbit satellite, of course.
At it's current altitude, the ISS orbit decays about 100m per day. And the lower it dips into the upper atmosphere, the faster the rate of decay becomes. Without correctional boosts, the ISS would probably fall from they sky relatively quickly. I've seen estimations of approximately six months or so.
Which is entirely the point of using that orbit.
Anything else beside the ISS (i.e.: debris) will lack said boost and will eventually fall from the sky rather quickly, which means that such low orbit are relatively clean and only contain the few man-made object that can actually boost and nothing else: this means a lot less risks of debris/micro-meteorite impact and a lot less necessary collision-avoidance corrections.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If there is, it would pass right there.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Slashdot ate my link.
there
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Generate a large magnetic field to attrack space junk to the ISS. Once a sufficient amount of junk is collected, _then_ allow it to fall to the Earth.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.
Meanwhile, Cthulu is likely getting pissed about all the junk being dumped...
The real question is why the Old Ones want all those satellites...
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