Space Pollution

For millennia, mankind has used Earth’s resources however it wanted, and when we were done with something, we simply abandoned it. Most of this stuff will - eventually - return to its component parts, thanks to weather and other natural events.

But there is no weather in space, so what happens to stuff that gets abandoned there?

Mostly, it stays where we left it, usually in some kind of orbit around Earth. Lose contact with an old satellite? That’s okay, we need a new one anyway; we’ll just put the new one in a new orbit. Somebody lost their wrench while working outside? I think the job can still be done with this other wrench and a little ingenuity. The lost wrench? Oh, just move the station another kilometer higher, and you should be fine.

Yes, we’ve been cavalier about the junk we’ve left out there. Some gets sent into a ‘graveyard orbit’ at the end of its usefulness. Other stuff eventually is pulled toward the Earth and (hopefully) burns up before it hits the ground. Remember Skylab? That was scary, to know this big thing was coming down, that it would not burn up completely, but not know exactly where it would hit. Then it broke into pieces, some of which still made it to the surface, and even more uncertainty where they would hit.

Some satellites had a nuclear reactor to power their equipment. At the end of their ‘life’, many were sent to a graveyard orbit, but others fell to Earth, where they became a problem. Even those in the graveyard could be punctured by a micro-meteor and leak coolant from the reactor. The coolant would solidify and become droplets of more junk.

So, let’s see, we have dead satellites, booster stages, fragments of booster stages that have exploded, fragments caused by collisions, and lost equipment, just to name a few categories of space pollution. Now, the movies always depict (these days) a tool as having a tether to connect it to the astronaut, but it apparently took time to think of doing that. The ‘lost equipment’ category includes: a glove, 2 cameras, a thermal blanket, bags of garbage, a wrench and a toothbrush. Okay, those bulky space suit gloves can make it difficult to maintain a grip, but how does an astronaut lose one of his gloves?

People try to keep track of all this stuff, try to avoid collisions with equipment still in use. I don’t know who supplied these numbers, but there are over 170,000,000 pieces of debris smaller than 1 cm, as of July 2013. Additionally, there are 670,000 pieces between 1 and 10 cm (3.9 inches), and 29,000 pieces larger than 10 cm.

So, who cares? Most of it’s tiny, and if it’s big enough to do damage, you just move your ship or satellite out of the way. Yes, most of it is tiny, but at the speeds they travel, even the tiny ones pack quite a punch. And the equipment can’t always move out of the way.

The Kessler syndrome theorizes that once space debris reaches a particular density, there will be a chain reaction of collisions, each breaking its components into smaller pieces, which go on to have more collisions... It’s uncertain whether the Earth has already reached that point, but it’s not something we want to happen. The Earth could become completely swaddled in debris to the point that we could no longer launch ourselves into space. There goes our glorious dreams of a Space Empire! Or even of just getting off this rock to colonize... any place else.

Would such a debris cloud cut the amount of sunlight that reaches us? That might help mitigate global warming! If not, then I guess we’ll just bake ourselves on the ground as we kick ourselves for making it impossible to move away.

There have been many suggestions on how to remove space debris. At least one country has built their idea and sent it up for testing, but couldn’t get it to work. Most don’t see it as ‘cost effective’.

So, here’s my idea. If you have a big problem, you need to think big. Build a space station. I know, we have one, but that’s not big enough. We need a big one, with manufacturing capabilities and housing/entertainment for the workers. Use a small space tug to go out, grab debris and bring it back as ‘raw material’ for building interplanetary space ships.

Or maybe you prefer to sit back and wait for ‘nature to take its course’?

By the way, have you seen the movie Gravity? That was the Kessler syndrome in action.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris

Going to Mars

Every once in a while, I happen across a bit of information that indicates The Future Is On Its Way! It doesn’t seem to be arriving in a way that’s logical or methodical (to me), but I’m not in charge of these things.

I would have thought it logical to build the space station into an actual way station, possibly even a place to build things like space ships. They could be ‘launched’ without having to battle their way out of the Earth’s gravity.

They could be built with resources mined from the moon, which has much less gravity, so getting those materials into space would take less fuel. That would mean there would need to be some kind of working colony on the moon, to provide workers for the mine, and possibly for refining the materials, or even making the pieces for the space ship. And, of course, to care for the support systems for the workers; the food (garden), air and water supplies.

Eventually, some of that mining could be moved to the asteroid belt. More stations could be built out there, as way stations/refineries/colonies. From there, it seems it would be relatively easy to move on to Mars.

I know, I’m talking old school science fiction stories. Well, a lot of the science fiction authors I read as a young person were also scientists, so they tended to think these things out logically.

Instead, I find articles about thousands of people being whittled down to a handful of colonists for Mars. (How are they getting there? Where will they live? How many supplies will they need to take with them? I haven’t heard anything about any of that.)The space station humans worked so hard to create is all but forgotten. Same with the moon. A warp-speed ship is being designed, even though no one knows how to create warp speed.

The latest article I saw is about NASA’s plan to create one component of rocket fuel on Mars. No humans required. Although, once those humans did arrive, they could breath the component, since the robots NASA plans to send will be converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. The other component needed for rocket fuel - hydrogen - was mentioned in the article, but as an after-thought. As if all the colonists would need to do is run down to the local grocery store and get some.

I’m excited by the prospect of humans going to Mars and that someone is thinking far enough ahead to spend time designing a warp-speed ship. BUT I really think these things need a support system behind them. Otherwise, we are just asking for failure. One tiny little failure could doom a colony that had to rely on Earth for help. It would still take time for help to arrive from an asteroid colony, but not as much time.

Okay. We’ve taken a couple baby steps into space. Now we’re reaching for the big shiny toy in the next room, completely ignoring all the not-as-shiny toys between us and there.

Hanging On

Hanging On

This is why I’ve hung on all those years of (apparently) not making any progress as an author. This is what I dreamed of way back in the fourth grade when I started writing stories. But when push came to shove, when I reached adulthood, I had a family to help support, and ‘author’ just wasn’t reliable enough as an income, so I had to get a ‘real’ job.

I still wrote. My first husband once told me I wrote on a sixth-grade level, and I gave up writing for a year or so. But he was a manipulator, and probably jealous. Eventually, the stories insisted I let them out again. So I did, but I never let him see them again.

After our divorce, I took a deep breath and moved on. To improve my skills, I studied grammar, joined critique groups, attended writer’s workshops. And I wrote. Co-workers became accustomed to seeing me in the lunch room, scribbling onto any size or shape of paper. One told me several times that I just HAD to tell her when I got published. (That reminds me, I have to look her up and let her know.)

And finally, I feel I’ve taken a step forward. An anthology has accepted one of my short stories. A small press has accepted both my novella and my first fantasy novel.

I have arrived!

Well, maybe not actually arrived. But I have completed an important step, one I’ve been seriously trying to take for the past 15 years. I will be published. (Take several deep breaths of satisfaction - try not to hyperventilate.)

I’m not sure when the anthology will come out. It did have an expected launch date of October when I submitted, but the editor got so many great submissions on the subject, it grew from one volume to two, and I haven’t heard if the launch date has been adjusted. The small press is trying to launch both my efforts in July or August.

I’ll tell you more about all these stories in future episodes. But if you’ll excuse me, right now I have more submissions to send out, and more stories to write, edit and polish. An author’s work is never done. Good thing I love doing it!

NASA News

Yesterday, my husband and I visited the Orlando Science Center. We'd heard they had a NASA person coming in to give a talk on Curiosity, their latest probe on Mars. Since we both had expected there to be at least one space station, a moon base and a Martian colony by now, we are always eager to hear if we're getting any closer to that.

The talk started with a few questions from the audience as the rest of the audience filed into the auditorium. One guy asked if it was true NASA had recently launched from some old base in Maryland, and young Samantha, the rocket scientist who had been with NASA for 2 years, said, yes that was true. Then the guy asked if Maryland was a better location for launches than Florida. No, she returned, Florida was the better location for an equatorial orbit like the ones they want. Then why launch from Maryland at all? Sam, flustered, turned to her older cohort, Rich, who promptly answered, "Because some Congressman told us to."

He went on to explain that this unnamed Congressman thought it would be a good idea for NASA to make some launches from his district, and because he thought that, they had to rebuild launch pads, construct a clean room and several other buildings, and finally, make a launch. Billions of dollars used for that effort that some people feel could have been used in better ways. My first thought was that it was no wonder NASA was 'behind', if they had to stop and fulfill every Congressman's egotistical whim.

They touched on the International Space station, roughly the size of a football field, counting all the solar panels, but the living space for the crew of 6 is about the size of the interior cabin of a 747. The ISS is expected to be decommissioned by 2020, did you know that? Well, the US expects to do that, but the Russians think it should be left there. The Russians tend to keep using what they have until it can't be kept in one piece any more.

There was a lot of information in that one-hour talk. Next week, I'll try to remember enough to talk about the Kepler telescope and the Curiosity robot on Mars.