Friday, September 15, 2006
Re more Bolts in Space...
Remember those old plastic "pearls on a string" necklaces that just snapped together? Put nuts or bolts on plastic strings with a socket glued to the bolt and the male end to the string. You can still rotate the nut or bolt before "unplugging". Even if you unplugged only the moment before installing the nut or bolt, that would help with the following situation:
Spacewalkers Add to Orbiting Space Junk
This week the Atlantis astronauts made their own contributions to the space debris in low orbit: a couple of bolts that escaped from the addition they were connecting to the international space station.
To engineers, this isn't funny. Many of those pieces of space junk can kill astronauts, puncture satellites or at the very least scratch up expensive space shuttle windows.
"It's one of these problems that is growing in seriousness," said William Ailor, director of the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies at the Aerospace Corp. in Los Angeles. "It's really the small things that will get you."
http://www.physorg.com/news77471460.html
Admittedly, the problem is limited, as far as the present space station is concerned. It's in a low orbit, and because smaller objects dropped from it have greater surface area by weight (mass) they will slow as they collide with atoms and plasma, and drop into lower orbits and then into the earth's atmosphere.
Construction elsewhere in space, not just in higher, polar or more elleptical orbits, but at Lagrange points, etc, might have to be cleaner, however; else more substantial hazards might result in time.
Spacewalkers Add to Orbiting Space Junk
This week the Atlantis astronauts made their own contributions to the space debris in low orbit: a couple of bolts that escaped from the addition they were connecting to the international space station.
To engineers, this isn't funny. Many of those pieces of space junk can kill astronauts, puncture satellites or at the very least scratch up expensive space shuttle windows.
"It's one of these problems that is growing in seriousness," said William Ailor, director of the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies at the Aerospace Corp. in Los Angeles. "It's really the small things that will get you."
http://www.physorg.com/news77471460.html
Admittedly, the problem is limited, as far as the present space station is concerned. It's in a low orbit, and because smaller objects dropped from it have greater surface area by weight (mass) they will slow as they collide with atoms and plasma, and drop into lower orbits and then into the earth's atmosphere.
Construction elsewhere in space, not just in higher, polar or more elleptical orbits, but at Lagrange points, etc, might have to be cleaner, however; else more substantial hazards might result in time.
