Definitely. The time is right with Boy Blunder squatting in the White House to flex that resurgent Soviet muscle. "What's he gonna do, threaten us with a teleprompter speech?"
http://www.tldm.org/News4/satellite.htm
Posted on 02/11/2009 8:54:32 PM PST by gandalftb
For decades, space experts have warned of orbits around the planet growing so crowded that two satellites might one day slam into one another.
It happened Tuesday. And the whirling fragments could pose a threat to the International Space Station, though officials said the risk was now small.
“This is a first, unfortunately,” Nicholas L. Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA. Two communications satellites — one Russian, one American — cracked up. In the aftermath, military radars on the ground tracked large amounts of debris going into higher and lower orbits.
“Nothing to this extent” has ever happened before, Mr. Johnson said. “We’ve had three other accidental collisions between what we call catalog objects, but they were all much smaller than this,”.
The American satellite was an Iridium. Iridium Satellite, said the satellite weighed about 1,200 pounds and that its body was more than 12 feet long, not including large solar arrays.
In a statement, the company said that it had “lost an operational satellite” on Tuesday, apparently after it collided with “a nonoperational” Russian satellite.
“Although this event has minimal impact on Iridium’s service,” the statement added, “the company is taking immediate action to address the loss.”
“There are actually debris from this event which we believe are going through space station altitude already,” he said. The risk to the station, Mr. Johnson added, “is going to be very, very small.” In the worst case, he said, “We’ll just dodge them if we have to. It’s the small things you can’t see that are the ones that can do you harm.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I like NASA: “We’ll just dodge them (the pieces) if we have to."
Eventually, Earth orbits will be so cluttered with junk that it will be impossible to get past it safely, and the space age will be over for a few thousand years, until enough junk falls to Earth to clear the way again.
Likely subject of many updates!
I wonder if this was really an accident. And if not, which one of us was knocking out the other’s satellite and as a test or for a specific reason?
/johnny
Bill the Russians for the loss. They should be held accountable.
So when a thing like a room-sized satellite breaks, the fragments, which are now individually lighter than the original whole, start assuming higher orbits...
Am I correct?
debris going into higher and lower orbits
No need to throw out energy conservation just yet.
The remnants would probably shoot off in various trajectories. It wasn’t a bump or a fender bender.
Please. I think the mind of man will be able to work a path through it.
No. Although it sounds reasonable, weight has nothing to do with orbit size. In orbit everything is in free-fall around the earth, and therefore “weightless”.
Parts scatter into new orbits because the kinetic energy of the space craft translates into a big explosion when they collide. That explosion sends fragments out in all directions at high speed, some go up, some down.
Definitely. The time is right with Boy Blunder squatting in the White House to flex that resurgent Soviet muscle. "What's he gonna do, threaten us with a teleprompter speech?"
http://www.tldm.org/News4/satellite.htm
I’d say that weight would be a factor for anything to orbit. Mass, rather. This is not the portions of space unaffected by gravity.
The bulk of the fragments would start going higher up, wouldn’t it?
It depends on how they collided. Where their centers of gravity were relative to each other. Which parts stayed intact. Too many variables, too little information.
In a relative equilibrium state, it takes very little force to affect the orbit.
Or they are able to absorb the impacts which I would presume we would be capable of actually doing before a few thousand years.
Well, yes, but that was 25 years ago.
“As I said in an earlier thread, this doesn’t make sense, I think the Ruski’s successfully tested a killer satellite.”
I have great faith in the ability of the US media to spin and lie about anything initially.
I would look for - over the coming weeks, articles (foreign, probably) about scientists unable to reconcile the 2-satellite story with what they have observed subsequently upon review of available data. I would assume the US media will just ignore the story and black it out.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.