Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Space ISS

The Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility: Where Spacecraft Go To Die (bbc.com) 100

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.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility: Where Spacecraft Go To Die

Comments Filter:
  • by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Sunday October 22, 2017 @07:03PM (#55414899)
    something falls and scares the fish away
  • WHY?!? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DatbeDank ( 4580343 )

    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 real

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ccb621 ( 936868 )
      Gravity. What goes up will eventually come down unless it is pushed up again. If a satellite is beyond its lifespan, or the station is no longer feasible to maintain—whether the cost is too great, or there are no more experiments—it has to come down. Keeping it up costs resources—fuel.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Who are "we"? Who are you talking about, your cousins in nasa?

    • by fisted ( 2295862 )

      Something something component design life

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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.

      Do you really think NASA are a bunch of short-sighted dipshits who put billions in hardware into space, kept it continuously occupied for 16 years and 354 days since the arrival of Expedition 1 on 2 November 2000 [wikipedia.org], and spent millions on its upkeep, tracking, re-supply missions so they can treat it as a disposable research toy?????

      No, the mo

      • This is hard shit. But nothing humans makes lasts forever.

        Hard shit? Oh come on now. This ain't rocket science.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      > 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?

      So, when its has outlived its safe design life, what should we do with it? Spend billions of dollars carefully disassembling it and brining the worn out, useless parts back down to earth to be melted down as scrap? We don't yet have orbital recycling facilities, so you _have_ to pay the cost to get a box into orbit, the cost to box that shit up, the cost to throw it ba

    • At the current rate that Elon Musk, et. al. are ramping up their space efforts, by the time ISS is ready for decommission it may have a resale value to some entrepreneur wanting to save the high costs of building their own orbital infrastructure. The first fixer-upper in space actually may end up at a Lagrange point as a way station.

    • 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?

    • Re:WHY?!? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Miamicanes ( 730264 ) on Monday October 23, 2017 @01:02AM (#55416063)

      NASA has official plans to deorbit the ISS if it loses funding because it's required by law to have such plans.

      Russia would never, EVER allow NASA to actually go through with it.

      If NASA sent a demolition crew up to the ISS to start taking it apart, Russia would promptly evict them & announce they were taking over the station.

      The US would bitch & moan, compare it to space piracy, and threaten retaliation. Russia would roll its eyes and point out that we were planning to junk it anyway.

      After a week or two of tense negotiations, the presidents of the US and Russia would hold a press conference to announce their deal... the creation of a new commercial space resort, transfer of the American modules to it in exchange for partial ownership of the new venture, and an agreement by Russia to maintain it going forward. A few already-wealthy Russian oligarchs become even wealthier, the US declines to cash its dividend checks, space tourism becomes a reality (driven by the acquisition of a prohibitively-expensive asset for free) and the space station continues in orbit for another hundred years.

      The fact is, Russia would be insane NOT to do it. Even if the US side became completely derelict and ceased to be habitable over time, it would STILL be valuable as a source of recyclable raw materials already in orbit. Or even just a place to store shit that's halfway between "garbage" and "stuff that might be useful for something, someday".

      • Actually, they will just deorbit it piece by piece... The Russians, who have the technical means of launching replacement parts, but cannot afford to and the USA which has the money but not the technical means must both agree to keep this running, or it comes down in a blaze of glory.

        Neither country can maintain this station alone, at least right now. Together, the plan is to keep things going by slowly replacing pieces and parts with new, one module at a time and deorbiting the junk. If they both don't

        • by torkus ( 1133985 )

          Last I checked, SpaceX has been launching resupply missions which include replacement parts.

          If you mean replacement MODULES, well TBD as we haven't added any since SpaceX has gotten it's act together as far as I know.

          With the Falcon Heavy and and BFS I don't expect there'd be much issue with launching modules. It's more a matter of planned obsolescence. Some critical components that aren't (easily) replaceable have a designed lifetime...and then you have to re-evaluate or retire.

          With SpaceX and others ram

          • We cannot launch any large modules right now, only the Russians can. We also cannot launch personnel, only Russia can. It's only been recently that we've been able to get supplies delivered.

            I fully understand that this is hopefully going to change soon, but as of right now, we are totally dependent on the Russians to get people or large parts to the ISS.

    • Anything we send up there should be thought of as being up there for damn good

      It's in low-earth orbit. It's only up there until we stop sending fuel to power the rockets.

    • Do you drive a 16-year-old car? At some point it will cost more money to be renovating and repairing the ISS than it would to put up a new one.
    • Let me put it this way. You read a book. When you are done with it and you move you decide to give it away.

      You: What a waste of money it was in buying it and giving it to someone, I lost x dollars!!!
      Sane person: I'll remember what I read and apply that knowledge in the future, sweet!!!
  • 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.

  • by at10u8 ( 179705 ) on Sunday October 22, 2017 @08:12PM (#55415159)
    and dumping spacecraft there risks angering the Great Old Ones
  • by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 ) <mike@mikesmYEATS ... n.com minus poet> on Sunday October 22, 2017 @08:48PM (#55415267) Homepage
    Bombing a lifeless void in the South Pacific with space junk....what could go wrong?
    • Exotic materials and radioactive power sources in an isolated deep sea trench. Do they want giant mutant sea creatures ravaging thousands of square miles of ocean? Because that's how you get giant mutant sea creatures ravaging thousands of square miles of ocean.

  • "The Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility" sounds like the title of a prog-rock album.

  • Seems like a good place to dump vitrified radioactive waste.

  • by knorthern knight ( 513660 ) on Sunday October 22, 2017 @11:56PM (#55415907)

    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/... [wikipedia.org] 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.

    • by 4wdloop ( 1031398 ) on Monday October 23, 2017 @12:25AM (#55416003)

      Thanks, that explains LEO and constant falling down. But since it costs so much to bring anything up, would it still be very valuable to keep it flying with fueling it?

      I suspect the maintenance is more than just fuel. The heat/cool, air, seals, power all require machinery that breaks so there is a constant need of attention. I used to have a sailboat, it too kept dissolving even if not used.

      • I used to have a sailboat, it too kept dissolving even if not used.

        That in particular doesn't happen to spacecraft, though. Instead of corrosion being a big problem, you have to worry about impacts. One paint chip can ruin your whole day... And any dynamic seals can always fail, usually while in motion.

      • I suspect the maintenance is more than just fuel. The heat/cool, air, seals, power all require machinery that breaks so there is a constant need of attention. I used to have a sailboat, it too kept dissolving even if not used.

        And you suspect rightly. The workload of maintaining the ISS is almost two full time people. It could not be left unoccupied for long and expect its systems to remain intact and functioning - though there would be less stress on the system with no one on board. Some type of hard shut-down procedure to mothball it would be required, and probably require spending more money on special equipment to do it. And then reactivating it later would be an untried operation.

        And then there will be frequent reboosting co

    • ISS is at a relatively low altitude for one reason and one reason only - the Soyuz spacecraft couldn't reach it if it were any higher.

  • 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...
    • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      After being heated up to > 1000C I doubt there'd be anything left intact to make it worth recovering. Plus you can guarantee that any spy satellite will have been built so that the top secret espoinage parts are the first to burn up upon re-entry and all that reaches the sea is whatevers left of the core structure and motors.

  • The ISS is in freefall around the earth. As such, it has no weight. Similarly, the earth, which is in freefall around the sun, also has no weight.

    The ISS does, however, has a _mass_ of around 420 tonnes (462 tones).

    • the earth, which is in freefall around the sun, also has no weight.

      Duh, so if the Earth weighs nothing why can't I pick it up and kick it like a football at your head?

      You really haven't thought this through, have you?

      • by Tomahawk ( 1343 )

        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/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Why isn't there a "+1 Pedantic" option :)
  • 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.

    • by Anonymous Coward
    • 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?

      On the off chance that, being Monday and all, I'm not being trolled here: The total mass or volume of space junk that's made it back to Earth is dwarfed by the mass of trash that NYC hauls out to sea every day. Multiply that by the number of reasonably large cities and see how much of a dent in the total trash mass space-sourced stuff makes.

      • by homebru ( 57152 )

        The idea that a very large "bad behavior" is tolerated does not mean that a smaller "bad behavior" must/should similarly be tolerated.

        The oceans are not infinitely capable of absorbing our junk.

        • by G00F ( 241765 )

          I don't think you grasp the shear difference in volume. Not to mention the difference of the materials

          I've read New York City barges dumps 36,000 tons of garbage into the ocean daily. (dated figure from 2008) Completed ISS 450 tons, satellites weigh from 150lbs-3000lbs's.

          Most will burn off leaving disfigured rocks of mostly metal. The stuff NYC dumps, bet it's not the easy recycles (metal).

          I wonder how much work would it take to have it crash/land on the moon, where even as a wreck would be useful.

  • And why are we dumping our trash on their heads . .. . . . .
  • If there is, it would pass right there [gcmap.com].

  • 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...
  • Cthulhu is trapped in R'lyeh [wikipedia.org], according to The Call of Cthulhu [wikipedia.org]

    Lovecraft claims R'lyeh is located at 479S 12643WCoordinates: 479S 12643W in the southern Pacific Ocean. Writer August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, placed R'lyeh at 4951S 12834W. The latter coordinates place the city approximately 5,100 nautical miles (9,400 km) from the actual island of Pohnpei (Ponape), the location of the fictional "Ponape Scripture". Both locations are close to the Pacific pole of inaccessibility (4852.

Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.

Working...