NASA O.K.'s Dumping From ISS in Space

NASA has decided to relax the rules for releasing unwanted "stuff" in space from the International Space Station. They say they new space "debri" should pose no threat to to the International Space Station (ISS) or any other space vehicle.




They are claiming this new "junk" in space will not damage any other space vehicle, then further in the article they explain how a tiny fleck of paint has cracked the windows of the shuttle.

This just doesn't sound like it is as safe as they claim, and besides that, now we are going to start littering space on purpose?

This just doesn't seem like the right thing to do to me, NASA can track things in space as small as a grapefruit, so maybe they will only toss things out of the ISS that are bigger than a grapefruit so they can track it and avoid collisions with the "garbage". But what happens if that grapefruit size debri hits something a little smaller than it, now you may have a whole lot of smaller garbage/debri that NASA can't track floating around up there that may damage satellites and other space craft up there.

Just not a good idea in my opinion.

Related News Links:
space.newscientist.com
space.newscientist.com

[edit on 21-11-2006 by UM_Gazz]

They don't care the ISS is just a front image for the general public. And there's already 10.000s of debris all over the planet, this is not a good choice...

The humans... pollute the earth, than the space, than the entire universe. How human stupidity...

If things were released into a deorbital pattern I don't see a problem. Everything would just burn up. But if they're talking about just letting stuff go with no regard about where it will end up, well that's just dumb.

Can you figure out what this is a picture of ?

SOURCE


A man floating in space in a space suit you say???

That's what any normal person would have thought.

NOPE!!

A Russian space suit loaded with junk floats away from the International Space Station earlier in 2006 (Image: NASA)

That's maybe the worlds most expensive GARBAGE CAN !!!!

More info on the "Garbage (Suit) Can".

Then on 3 February 2006, a Russian space suit loaded with trash was released from the ISS. SuitSat-1, nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich, was equipped with a radio transmitter and batteries. It orbited Earth for 216 days, making it the longest-lived piece of debris from the ISS

So, in other words, this "Garbage (suit) Can" orbited the earth for about seven months. If a baseball sized piece of space debri/garbage (which NASA cannot track) had slammed into this "package", how many more pieces of space debri (the size of a paint chip that has cracked the shuttles window) would have been produced? A hundred, a thousand? Or would it have just punched a whole in the Garbage "suit" Can and not produced any debri? UNLIKELY!!

Why do they want to take these chances with the millions, billions of dollars being spent in space vehicles and satellites up there?

[edit on 21/11/06 by Keyhole]

Well, it's like apc said, as long as they're releaing it
into a de-orbital orbit, there's not much of a problem.


As for the space suit thing, it was an experiment, if I remember
it right the junk was used to fill the suit out, since there would
be no one in it.