"Shields to Maximum, Mr. Scott"

[knocker]

We know it's out there, debris from 50 years of space exploration — aluminum, steel, nylon, even liquid sodium from Russian satellites — orbiting around the Earth and posing a danger to manned and unmanned spacecraft.

 

According to NASA, there are more than 21,000 pieces of ‘space junk' roughly the size of a baseball (larger than 10 centimeters) in orbit, and about 500,000 pieces that are golf ball-sized (between one to 10 centimeters).

 

Sure, space is big, but when a piece of space junk strikes a spacecraft, the collision occurs at a velocity of 5 to 15 kilometers per second—roughly ten times faster than a speeding bullet!

 

http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/feature-stories/2013/shields-to-maximum

 

[nitro_deluxe]

Not sure what else I can say, to be honest

[mike Meehan]

What we need is a giant orbital vacuum cleaner and when the bag gets full jettison it off towards the sun where it will vaporise along with its contents.

 

It is a hazard though which will continue to get worse as the years progress and one day they will cause an accident.

[nitro_deluxe]

Phew..cheers mike! For coming to the rescue...poor sun, what has it done to deserve this

Been unusually kind to us Earthlings?

[mike Meehan]

Phew..cheers mike! For coming to the rescue...poor sun, what has it done to deserve this

Been unusually kind to us Earthlings?

Naw, it will do mankind a favour, with the extra fuel thrown into the system it may delay the sun becoming a red giant, in about 5 billion years time, by a few micro seconds.

[BornFromTheVoid]

It really didn't take us long to go from flying to polluting space, did it!?

[knocker]

Old habits die hard BFTV.

[Mountain Snow]

I'm sure in a few millennia the whole solar system will be littered with our detritus... 

[Styx]

If it wasn't for tiny pieces of scrap floating around in space we wouldn't have as many shooting stars to checkout at nighttime.

 

Besides, considering that no satellite or manned craft has run into the half a million pieces of scrap over the last few decades with a bad consequence just goes to show it is not much of a problem. The amount of scrap floating around up there is probably akin to Hyde park being completley littered, and then having a gale blow the litter away where it disperses proportionally across the entire skies of Great Britain. That's not pollution in the traditional sense of the word.

[swebby]

If it wasn't for tiny pieces of scrap floating around in space we wouldn't have as many shooting stars to checkout at nighttime.

 

Besides, considering that no satellite or manned craft has run into the half a million pieces of scrap over the last few decades with a bad consequence just goes to show it is not much of a problem. The amount of scrap floating around up there is probably akin to Hyde park being completley littered, and then having a gale blow the litter away where it disperses proportionally across the entire skies of Great Britain. That's not pollution in the traditional sense of the word.

Hi Styx,

 

Not sure that is entirely correct?  Found the 2 stories below.

 

http://www.space.com/5542-satellite-destroyed-space-collision.html

 

http://www.space.com/20138-russian-satellite-chinese-space-junk.html

 

Cheers

S