Duck!

in space •  7 years ago 

China's space station will fall out of space this week. They lost control of it some time ago, so it's uncertain where it will fall, but it's most likely to be in the ocean.

Guardian

I remember when Skylab dropped and that was much bigger. Space is already full of junk and those putting stuff up there really ought to ensure they can deal with it properly. They are supposed to have enough fuel to have a controlled descent. For geostationary satellites they get pushed out of the way to a 'graveyard' orbit at the end of their lives. Some of these are using electrical propulsion systems now, so carrying extra fuel is less of an issue.

Meanwhile experiments are ongoing to remove space junk. The latest uses a harpoon to capture items and pull them out of orbit.

The movie Gravity showed an extreme scenario where the junk could escalate and threaten astronauts, but even tiny particles are dangerous when traveling faster than a bullet.

If space tourism every takes off its going to get really busy up there.

Of course flat-earthers won't worry as they don't believe in space travel. One did just go up in a rocket to look at the Earth but didn't get anywhere near as high as a regular passenger jet. He's lucky he didn't kill himself.

Steem on, and watch the skies.

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When the American Skylab fell back to earth years ago, they were selling t-shirts with a bull's eye on them here.

Because everyone new American's couldn't hit a target ;-)

And........ they were right. not a single person with a bull's eye t-shirt got hit.

I remember people really cashed in with things like hard hats that would barely stop a baseball. Some of Skylab came down in Australia without anyone getting hurt.

Some of Skylab came down in Australia without anyone getting hurt.

i think that's because there was a cricket game on at the time and they were all at the cricket grounds, practicing their ball tampering and underarm bowling hehehe

There was so much junk pumped into orbit in the 60s and 70s!

At least Jerry Garcia is up there looking out for us :)

Up until few decades ago we had falling stars. Now we have trash falling from the sky.
Yup it is time to change things around. When startrek came around they were thinking that it would be possible whiten next fifty years. If somebody would have told them them that our great space odyssey culminated in clearing trash from the skies. ................fictions and reality.
Maybe we'll go ahead but for now it seems only good for playing around with rockets.

The space age is starting to kick off, but we have to be wary of messing it up as consumerism has down on earth

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Agreed.
I have studied cosmology and history by myself for last several years and absolutely love them both. Man I don't know how to say this properly but sometimes I get this feeling that we are being distracted by the skies when we aught to be looking where we walk. I say this in terms of present need and not as a permanent guiding philosophy.
That being said, last fifteen or so years have been absolutely crazy for astrophysics. Theories developed in the last century are being verified in this one.............amazing amazing work by amazing men and women.

We do need to fix things down here, but we shouldn't stop exploring.

It'll end up like the oceans. What's the next thing we can mess up?

Let's see. We already have falling aircrafts, drones, satellites and now we have a fricking space station.
Man I don't think it can get any worse, I mean can it?

Its not very reponsible really, if they feel they cant let it drop in their own region and in the sea then it could potentially cause a catastrophe. Hoping its not going to head for NW England.

You're more likely to be hit by a car than by something from space. I just hope they have plans for the ISS. That thing is enormous

Yeah but if it falls on a city land what gonna happen

That could be a disaster, but there are few cities likely to be hit and most of it should break up or burn up. There's nothing we can really do about it, but the chances are nobody will be killed.

Time for some protection.... We have altered the conditions of universe and now universe has started hitting back..

Our fate is in our own hands.