Just take a gander at this festering, infested dirtball we call Home.
Can you believe that! The article says something about over 4000 satellites being out there in orbit at various places. Most of them are inactive – junk.
I am stunned serious!
There’s a shit-pot more photos over at the link. Click on the ones here for greatly – greatly, I say – expanded detail.
The article says:
Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.
Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational – roughly 45 percent of these are both in LEO and GEO. Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).
This is porn. Uncrowded porn.
BTW: Posting/commenting will be light-to-nonexistent for the next few days. I will be popping down to S MO some time in the next week as soon as the weather clears. Busy, busy, busy…
Tags: boner
April 12, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Holy CRAP. Look at all those discarded stages.
April 13, 2008 at 8:14 am
Target-rich environment for the Missile Defense folks.
April 13, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Hooray! I may have potential job security yet! I mean, we gotta keep building targets for the MD folks, right?
I’m thinking it has to parallel how the civil engineers build targets for the missile/armament engineers/scientists.
April 13, 2008 at 1:11 pm
LK – you have introduced me to a new and exciting way to view civil engineers!
Target-designers.
April 13, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Well, if evil space guys ever show up, they’ll be intimidated by our “defense fleet.”
April 13, 2008 at 5:22 pm
That is a damned good point, mesa.