NASA's Skylab $400 Littering Fine Paid By DJ 111
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..."
Tough Luck (Score:2, Funny)
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.
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What? Did you forget about duck and cover? There are so many fall out shelters sitting around designed to handle a nuclear strike just miles away they they have been re purposed as stores and hotels and crap. I have two of them on my property that was capable of handling 80 people each ran by the civil air pat
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The second amendment ... made sure of that.
If we can keep it.
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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.
Simpsons (Score:5, Funny)
This story reads like a Simpsons' episode.
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Did they also warn you about the drop bears, and hoop snakes?
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You know they need better budget managers when... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You know they need better budget managers when. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Aren't Bakersfield and Barstow known as the armpits of California?
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I prefer to think of them as a little taste of West Virginia three hours from the coast.
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Being a foreigner, I have no clue where Barstow is exactly, but 'somewhere near Barstow' is on the edge of the desert. Definitely. And it's full of bats.
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Gotta love government bureaucracy. I guarantee you it was supposed to be approved by some middle manager who left/got transferred before getting around to doing it - and no one ever bothered to check after that.
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I bet the town could have sold the Skylab debris for more than $400.
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Littering? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
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If somebody knowingly left debris on the side of the road - not quite deliberately, but after a deliberate action they knew what lead to things like smashed headlights etc. falling off -, and then refused to clear it up... should they not receive a fine?
Put another way: why DIDN'T NASA clean up their debris? And no, "they're too far away and it'd be too expensive for them to do so" is not an excuse: just let them hire a local contractor. I know if China's space agency or whatever let debris fall on MY town,
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It's probably a jurisdictional thing. Once someone represented NASA entered the community, they would be liable for the littering fine. Even if it's a contractor from the community operating in NASA's interest. If the fine wasn't imposed, they probably would have contracted with someone for the clean up just to examine wreckage.
Re:Littering? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Where I come from, E-class (emergency-class) wrecker license tags, the ones that allow you to legally respond to car wrecks, are highly prized, being considered virtually a license to print money. Because of that, the wrecker drivers are perfectly willing to shoulder the extra burden of post-wreck cleanup. To keep your E-tag, you have to clean up the miscellaneous parts littering the road after a wreck. Generally, the last step in towing away a wrecked car involves the wrecker driver using a large pushbroom to clean off the roadway.
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Those crazy Aussies!
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Receiving a fine in the specific instance you describe is unpleasant, but unlikely to be proof supporting either of your claims.
Re:Littering? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, they fine you for littering if you leave your bumper on the road after an accident. They also bill you for repairing the dividers, signposts, and lamp posts that you destroyed in an accident. Utah did that to my parents when they got into a car accident. Utah could get reimbursement from the federal government only by showing they exhausted other sources of funding, including billing accident victims.
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Whats more, they now add a £15 surcharge to speeding fines etc. to fund "compensation for the victims of crime". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/5225133/Fined-motorists-to-be-hit-with-15-victims-surcharge.html [telegraph.co.uk]
This comes as they are rolling out a huge expansion of speed cameras, including "ANPR" (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) which time your car point-to-point, over many miles, and handily also record your (and everybody else's) vehicle movements for 5 years at
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They can do, yes. Western Australia has on the spot littering fines for any litter what-so-ever. Of course, you have to be caught and some bastard actually has to write you up.
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Just wait! (Score:1)
If they think that Skylab was bad, just wait until NASA crashes the ISS [slashdot.org] into the middle of Sydney!
Re:Just wait! (Score:5, Funny)
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Wow.
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In order for this to work, you need to come up with some phrase like "very rough landing." Yes, it still includes a list of not so bad occurrences, but it's a lot less encompassing.
Mr. Anonymous Trolling Coward, I indeed have a very healthy number of close friends. You really sh
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I don't think de-orbiting means what you think it means. They did not say "plan to re-entry the ISS." I think de-orbit simply means the ISS will exit Earthly orbit and head off into space on some tangent to be determined by a bunch of really smart scientists.
Says who? De-orbit means either send it off into space or send it crashing to the ground. NASA is likely to do whichever is cheaper, especially when their budget gets cut even further over the next few years.
Since the Aussies seem to have liked the last one we send them, judging by their art in that photo, we should send them this one too. :)
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You mean like this [nasa.gov] 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.
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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.
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ISS will exit Earthly orbit and head off into space
HAH! They're learning how to spend their money wisely. Not only do we no longer have to support the ISS, we also get to take credit for the first ruskies on Mars AND we get a good laugh at Russia's expense.
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Don't joke about that.
The original Gundam involved an incident where a space colony was dropped on Australia and wiped out Sydney. :( Now that we have an original Gundam unit sitting in tokyo....
SkyLab II: ISS Strikes Back (Score:5, Funny)
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."
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I expect the headline "ISS sets course for the Moon."
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de-orbit - v.: to remove from orbit
If the ISS is somehow hurled out into space, is it still in orbit? No.
If the ISS is allowed to let Earth's gravity do its thing, is it still in orbit? No.
Now tell me, which do you think is cheaper & easier: to shuttle a bunch of fuel out to the ISS, then use that fuel to rocket that thing out of orbit in such a way that it flies off into space? Or to use what fuel it already has onboard to send the ISS, one module at a time, into controlled re-entry?
Please feel fre
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Shh! You're going to blow his chance to try to look smart by showing off half-baked knowledge misinterpreted from something he heard in passing, probably on a third-rate Skiffy B-movie (possibly on the Skiffy, er, Sci-Fi, er, SyFy Channel). How can he lord it over his equally ignorant peers when they come to visit his mom's basement if you're going to bring up something as irrelevant as facts!?
Although one could argue that objects on the surface of the Earth still move in a more-or-less elliptical path ar
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I picked up on what happened just fine--it was pointed out that you were wrong, and that "de-orbit" was a valid, correct, and even standard term to use there, and you still don't seem to get it.
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The Apollo missions put about 30,000 kg into lunar orbit. ISS has a mass just above 300,000 kg.
So it is entirely possible, but it sounds awful expensive.
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It's really a pity, too- either original plan would have saved Sk
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Interest? (Score:5, Insightful)
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But the violation was committed in space... not in Australia's jurisdiction. Perhaps Australia should have sued SPACE for letting the debris fall in their country.
as Dr. Forrester said... (Score:2)
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Vger
Hometown publicity (Score:5, Interesting)
It's kind of sad (Score:2)
the number of posters to this story who don't realize that the fine was a joke.
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Foreign governments don't pay their parking tics (Score:3, Informative)
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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.
I don't seem to remember Skylab spending any time in Australian customs and excise, or being reviewed by an inspector, before entering Australian territory, either.
Your post is silly.
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Re:Foreign governments don't pay their parking tic (Score:4, Informative)
Get off my lawn (Score:5, Informative)
two small towns at opposite ends of the Pacific (Score:1)
So... (Score:2, Interesting)
How much money has that town made off of that particular bit of random fame?
I'll bet it is a helluva lot more than the fine.
(How much did they spend on pursuing the claim... *g*)
Humans are, for the most part, fucking idiots.
(I have karma to burn, so go ahead and mod me down if you feel you have to. Ask me if I care, fools.)
SB
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I'm sure if the roles were reversed, and Australia fired a piece of junk over at the USA, we'd have a pack of angry citizens out for blood.
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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
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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...