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To: Talisker

Me, too.

Anyway, the ISS is in the buckyball atmosphere - it is not in a vacuum. There is wind up there - howling wind, going at thousands of miles an hour.

It is just very thin.


19 posted on 09/03/2009 1:51:31 AM PDT by patton (Obama has replaced "Res Publica" with "Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi.")
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To: patton
Anyway, the ISS is in the buckyball atmosphere - it is not in a vacuum. There is wind up there - howling wind, going at thousands of miles an hour. It is just very thin.

If (if, mind you) I was in the mind to bite, I would reflect on the fact that the solar wind extends far beyond Pluto, and has enough of a strength to enable solar-sailed spacecraft to be built.

I would also reflect on the fact that enormous electrically charged interstellar gasses are observed stretching across light years in length.

So, if I continued to reflect, I would duly conclude that unless you actually went fully intergalactic, you'd always be in some sort of "wind" (and even then, who knows what flows between galaxies?).

But if I were then to limit my reflections to the ISS, I would probably conclude that minute variations in the earth's gravitational field would be the probable cause of the perturbations and gradual degradation of the ISS orbit, rather than ionic wind at that altitude.

Granted, I could be wrong.

But at this hour of the night, I wouldn't agree to it without being shown a lot of colorful charts to prove it.

21 posted on 09/03/2009 2:02:02 AM PDT by Talisker (When you find a turtle on top of a fence post, you can be damn sure it didn't get there on it's own.)
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