Astronauts Forced To Take Shelter From Space Junk 55
An anonymous reader writes: Three astronauts living at the International Space Station were forced to scramble to safety Thursday after a "close pass" by flying Russian space debris. The men decamped into the Soyuz spacecraft, which is attached to the orbiting station, while a chunk of an old Russian weather satellite passed 1.5 miles away. Flight engineer Scott Kelly tweeted: "Happy there was no impact. Great coordination with international ground teams. Excellent training."
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Not so much fight, just ignore, until... ...there is some tragedy and they get a chance to declare a "War on Space Junk", then they will go into full gear, setting up shell corporations to suck up government funding while accomplishing very little beyond what would normally deorbit due to atmospheric drag. We might even get lucky and create an even more dangerous situation by placing tons of gear into orbit attempting to 'clean up'
Of course they will declare victory early on and then blame a subsequent admi
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... being able to keep their old junk but in reality they must replace it with inferior but more expensive space junk.
You're still pissed off about that low-flow toilet, aren't you, Hank?
FYI... (Score:1)
My first post was "Funny", my SECOND post was "Flame Bait"
Just thought you would benefit from the demonstration
Re: And still the Republicans fight... (Score:5, Funny)
This is me logging in to tell you there is no such thing as cow-towing, but the idea of it happening in orbit cracks me up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: And still the Republicans fight... (Score:4, Funny)
It does lend itself to the idea of western ranchers aiding in the "War on Space Junk"(TM) by providing range-fed beef to be launched into orbit, where they will act like sponges mopping up vast swaths of orbital trash, then burn up like fireworks as they fall back to Earth, with the various metallic particles each providing a different color of light.
I can even see an aged Marlborough Man-esque figure getting all sentimental over his herd giving their all to save the space-men then turning it into a piece of insightful Cowboy poetry
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I can even see an aged Marlborough Man-esque figure getting all sentimental over his herd giving their all to save the space-men then turning it into a piece of insightful Cowboy poetry
By which you mean he'll deliver his speech while dying of cancer in a dark room, right?
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No way; heat, metal and meat. I fail to see what is bad about this situation.
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Kessler syndrome indicates that if they wait for a couple large impacts, it could be too late.
I propose that we launch a ion drive satellite that can change orbits at will and use magnets and electrostatic and physical means to capture space junk and dead satellites and either deliver them to a garbage depot in orbit for recycling or place them in a de-orbit trajectory that will use the gravitational influence of still active and maneuverable satellites to de-orbit further.
(It is known that when an object in a lower orbit and an object an a higher orbit pass by each other the gravitational influence
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Seriously though, we need an international law that states that end of life of any object put into orbit must include a plan for it's debris collection and de-orbit into a target zone in the pacific ocean. (it's a big target)
Won't work for GEO. They don't carry enough fuel to de-orbit, and doing so would be cost prohibitive.
If we ever sent up a space elevator, how would we protect it from all our junk? Would we need to clean up the orbits, or could we armor it, or have a point defense system?
Re:And still the Republicans fight... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And still the Republicans fight... (Score:4, Informative)
And not that I really care much about partisan politics, but the facilities are military with year over year increasing budgets. Military spending is typically associated with the republican party.
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Really cool movie.
Yes, but with lots of inaccuracies. [time.com]
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Really cool movie.
Yes, but with lots of inaccuracies. [time.com]
Yeah, saw it, and read the article. Now... parts of the movie are NOT as inaccurate as you might think...
Time (and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who also took issue with the film's accuracy or lack-thereof,) both got this basic point wrong: They both basically stated that there's no way that would/could happen because they're in different orbits. (Tyson also pointed out that nothing orbits in that direction anyway, which is also right, but simultaneously wrong.)
They both failed to consider the possibility of some
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or to put it another way
Scientist:" Lol Gravity is full of inaccuracies, I mean nothing could actually hit the ISS"
News 3 days later: "IIS takes emergency action as killer lump of satellite comes perilously close to hitting it".
Scientists, easy to tell us all how wrong we are without stopping to consider possibilities.
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Surely you mean Planetes [wikipedia.org].
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+1 for Planetes.
Probably the most accurate SF you'd ever see on TV.
passed 1.5 miles away (Score:1)
Was this made up by the submitter? It's nowhere to be found in the article.
Re: passed 1.5 miles away (Score:1)
Scramble? (Score:1)
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Scramble:
1. To move or climb hurriedly, especially on the hands and knees.
2. To struggle or contend frantically in order to get something: scrambled for the best seats.
What caught me was that they scrambled to safety to a Soyuz.
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Yep, frantic bongo music...the rug bunched up behind them. It was a textbook scramble.
Three Astronauts? (Score:3)
Why are there only three astronauts on the ISS right now rather than six? Are we between crew rotations right now?
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Yes. 3 more launch on 22nd of July.
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Gotcha. Thanks.
Gravity (Score:2)
I JUST finished watching the movie Gravity about 5 minutes ago.
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What happens if the Soyuz spacecraft gets hit? (Score:1)
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It's all ground based.
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Scramble might be an exaggeration (Score:2)
It's a fairly routine activity for them to hunk down on passing debris. I remember a story a few years ago when they actually had to do this for a fleck of paint about 1cm in size.
They're trained for these and it probably happens a lot more than we know.
What was the space junk doing... (Score:2)
What was the Space Junk doing with the shelter in the first place? And what forced the astronauts to take it away?