http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070722/sc_space/isscrewtotossspacejunkonspacewalk

Quote :

""This is the first time we've ever done a jettison quite like this on the space station," Dempsey said, adding that while the agency doesn't know where the pieces will land, they should plunge into the ocean and not into satellites in orbit."

how do they know where it will land, are they just taking a risk?

7/22/2007 1:46:51 PM

They know.

They're NASA.

Why did you make this thread?

7/22/2007 1:51:20 PM

Quote :

"They know. They're NASA. "

Skylab?

7/22/2007 1:53:36 PM

[Edited on July 22, 2007 at 2:16 PM. Reason : to make people happy.]

7/22/2007 1:54:58 PM

^

7/22/2007 1:56:23 PM

that's what i predicted.

some stupid smiley or course words, etc, without any argument.

7/22/2007 1:57:52 PM

Seems like you are making a continent out of a mole hill. There isn't enough info in that article you read to be nearly as pissed off as you want to be.

7/22/2007 1:58:37 PM

what makes it more of a risk is that it will take more than a year before it enters our atmosphere, thats a hard calculation to make as to where it will land,
hopefully it wont hit an airplane in the air

7/22/2007 1:59:22 PM

It would be EXTREMELY irresponsible to just dump it in space. I'm sure NASA/ESA are doing their best to calculate when is the best time to ditch the garbage. And this is the INTERNATIONAL space station, its not just our trash nor is it just our decision to do this.

7/22/2007 2:00:27 PM

The article makes it clear that most of it will be destroyed in the atmosphere.

They usually put the garbage into an old soyuz spacecraft and fire it off into the ocean - i imagine thats impractical this time because of the old ammonia tank. The point is they've been doing this for a while with no problems.

7/22/2007 2:00:36 PM

^^^^ maybe so, but at the same time, there isn't enough info given to assuage the concerns i raised.

this is all i saw, that's all it matters:

Quote :

"they'll mostly burn up the Earth's atmosphere-except for sizeable chunks of the ammonia tank."

Quote :

"the agency doesn't know where the pieces will land, they should plunge into the ocean and not into satellites in orbit."

7/22/2007 2:02:39 PM

Quote :

"assuage the concerns i raised"

Sure, that's fine, but you jumped passed the point of having concerns, straight to condemning the organization and assuming they are being careless and assuming the worst will happen.

7/22/2007 2:03:59 PM

actually he went straight to condemning the United States and not the organization

7/22/2007 2:06:56 PM

^ What else do you expect from 0EPII1?

7/22/2007 2:40:42 PM

touche

7/22/2007 2:49:55 PM

Its not like they're blowing up the Death Star.

7/22/2007 2:51:22 PM

staaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on target

7/22/2007 2:52:51 PM

RIP Porkins

7/22/2007 3:02:12 PM

I wonder what that ammonia tank is made out of that will allow it to survive re-entry.

7/22/2007 3:25:30 PM

cockroaches

7/22/2007 3:35:38 PM

quality thread A+++

7/22/2007 3:58:44 PM

its not like there are thousands of tons of space debris from the 50 odd years that man has been in space

7/22/2007 4:21:42 PM

and why can't they just shoot it out of orbit towards the sun??

7/22/2007 4:50:13 PM

Fuel is expensive, and not just laying around the ISS to use for such purposes.

7/22/2007 4:58:11 PM

^^ Eventually the heat would cause its wings to melt and it would fall back to Earth anyway.

7/22/2007 6:44:47 PM

Quote :

"^^ Eventually the heat would cause its wings to melt and it would fall back to Earth anyway."

LOL

ok so if im not mistaken, the ISS is traveling at a speed that allows it to perfectly balance out the earth's gravity...so shouldn't they just have to launch the garbage at a speed a little faster than that, and let it slingshot itself out of orbit?

7/22/2007 7:11:54 PM

^ No, there's a big speed/energy difference to go from LEO (Low Earth Orbit) to Escape velocity. LEO requires 6.9 km/sec if I'm not mistaken and escape velocity is 11.2 km/sec

[Edited on July 22, 2007 at 7:28 PM. Reason : checkd my figures]

7/22/2007 7:27:18 PM

How do they think it will land in the ocean?


the odds are in their favor... throw it at the earth so that they miss anything in space..... and they have a 70% chance of hitting ocean.

7/22/2007 10:43:50 PM

Based upon its orbit velocity, the speed at which they will release it towards the earth, the increasing acceleration/force of earth's gravity as it approaches earth as a function of time, and the resistance of the atmosphere that will cause the junk to slow down (relative to the earth's surface) as it burns up, they probably figured out a 500 mile area where it will be most likely to land, and that was probably in the middle of nowhere in the ocean.

There's science involved in this stuff, and it's improved a lot since skylab.

7/22/2007 11:20:20 PM

I sort of assumed this whole thread was a troll, but it seems that some people are serious.

7/22/2007 11:44:19 PM

I have a semi-relevant and yet completely moot question for you all to ponder


Let us suppose that in a couple hundred years our usable landfill capacity has peaked, and we need to find something else to do with all our garbage. Let us also assume we've devised a cheap method of conveying cargo into orbit, such as something slightly less hair-brained than the tethered space elevator. I would assume that the easiest and most "responsible" way to get rid of non-recyclable and hazardous waste would be to carry it up and fling it at the sun. So again, let us assume that is what we're doing.

Now presumably the mass of the earth and its atmosphere remains relatively constant to any significant degree, fluctuating only as space debris enters our atmosphere and solar winds skim off the outer layers. If we were to remove material from the earth, en masse, in this manner, it is presumable that over a looong time we would slightly reduce the mass of the earth.

What effect, if any, would this have on the earth's orbit relative to the sun, and the moon's relative to the earth? If you're having a hard time swallowing the story behind the question, then just ask yourself what any small but significant change in the earth's average mass would have on it's trajectory and the resulting changes in climate, seasons, rotation, magnetism, and overall longevity.

THAT IS ALL, THANKS FOR PLAYING

7/23/2007 12:58:27 AM

How do you think the United States Navy rids itself of much of its waste while at sea?

Quote :

"The pulper grinds the food and paper waste and discharges it overboard."

http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=2712

7/23/2007 2:12:08 AM

^^ Theoretically it could work, What you would need would be a mass accelerator though, and we don't have any of those built just yet.

7/23/2007 7:32:42 AM

the estimated mass of the earth is 5*10^24 kg

i would be shocked if people could eject enough mass into the sun to make a difference in those previously mentioned factors before recycling technology could process close to everything that is thrown away

7/23/2007 10:24:25 AM

Who cares we don't need space. We should turn that into our dump now.

7/23/2007 10:26:25 AM

Your argument/idea/whateverthefuckyouweresmoking fails because it would mean we converted a not insignificant percent of the earth's mass into trash.

There are other obvious issues with this besides shooting our shit into the sun.

7/23/2007 11:36:58 AM

To paerabol: The Space Elevator is not "hair-brained," man.



http://video.aol.com/video-detail/id/4109960150

7/23/2007 11:42:33 AM

How do you get a 600 ton counter weight in orbit?

7/23/2007 11:52:23 AM

^ Spacecraft?



[Edited on July 23, 2007 at 12:07 PM. Reason : .]

7/23/2007 12:01:12 PM

^^use an elevator dur

7/23/2007 12:18:15 PM

^^^ don;t have to bring it up all at once

7/23/2007 12:35:52 PM

^ Exactly--and I think the Space Shuttle can do about a 25-ton payload.

7/23/2007 1:36:00 PM

I was actually reading up on Skylab after I read this thread last night.

Apparently the original concept was to create a "Wet workshop" out of a vented fuel tank used on the Saturn V that launched the station. The scientific material would be carried in the space of the LEM and would be slid into the empty tank which would then be pressurized, creating a large living space between the lab and the outer wall of the fuel tank.

Why haven't they done anything like that with the external tank on the shuttle? It reaches 98% of the speed necessary to reach orbit and is jettisoned after main engine cut off. A single ET has more internal space than the entire ISS. Even if it wasn't used, it could be put in orbit and left until needed. I can only imagine how useful it would be to have over a quarter million tons of aluminum alloy already in space (121 shuttle launches * 25 tons per ET).

Apparently they were scheduled to try it before the Challenger blew up but new safety rules put in place afterwards prevented it.

Anyways, they drop a 25 ton fuel tank in the ocean after every launch. That really makes 1600 pounds look like small potatoes.

[Edited on July 23, 2007 at 2:13 PM. Reason : .]

7/23/2007 2:13:12 PM

^ They used to do a lot of cool shit in the old days. Truth.

7/25/2007 12:44:09 AM

^ Word.

NASA used to be fighter pilots, not math club kids.

7/25/2007 3:42:50 PM

^^^I'm actually reading up on some Saturn IB and Skylab stuff for work. I have the flight manual right here at my desk. Interesting stuff.

7/25/2007 4:42:16 PM

Quote :

"NASA used to be fighter pilots, not math club kids."

ummmmmm. i don't know where you got that idea. i mean yeah, astronauts used to be (and still are often) pilots. but ALL of them were incredibly smart.

7/25/2007 5:12:57 PM

Of course they're smart. But aside from the guy who lands the shuttle most of the crews are uninteresting egg heads.

All of the Mercury 7 were experienced combat pilots or test pilots and were selected because the public would find them interesting, not because they could do the job better than anyone else.

7/25/2007 5:26:24 PM

they also weren't trying to get a whole lot of real science done on the mercury missions, they were just trying to get the mechanics of our space program going.

7/25/2007 5:36:35 PM

Monkeys successfully piloted the Mercury spacecraft.


[Edited on July 25, 2007 at 5:40 PM. Reason : .]

7/25/2007 5:38:40 PM