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Wi Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 14:48:31 -0400
Begin forwarded message:
From: DV Henkel-Wallace <david () abscott com> Date: May 12, 2008 12:38:41 PM EDT To: "farber1 () byrden com" <farber1 () byrden com> Cc: David Farber <dave () farber net>Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Wi Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock
Sorry, by "stationary" I meant either "geostationary" or "at a lagrange point". And indeed, the space junk issue was what got me thinking of it. At first I figured it would likely collect in a common ecliptic band (presumably coplanar with that of our moon). And in fact that might be what happens. The problem is the timescale. The fascinating part of all this (for me) is social context. In the (very late) 60s and 70s, when I was little, the cold war was in full bloom and even earth day et al didn't (as I remember) have a huge impact on space exploration. So this question of leaving trash in orbit was just a "huh" question. Nowadays I realise the space junk issue can be yet another example of poisoning the (extra-)global environment in an irreversible way, so I wonder if you could attract actual attention / reduction in the amount of crud through publicity. Unfortunately, I suspect if you're going to fight a war anyway, abrogating a treaty is the least of your worries. The only checks are resources and self-interest. -d PS: Military operations are basically by definition environmentally nasty: make the other guy's local environment so nasty that he croaks. And since you're really worried about accomplishing that, you expand the definition of "local" a bit in case he's moved around or has a few buddies over. But we often forget that military maintenance (practice, surveillance, etc) are also environmentally bad news during peacetime too as the military is immune the the various EPA/OSHA laws (I suspect OSHA would not approve of a workplace that included people shooting at you). I imagine there's a small bit of environmental consideration in military decisions just to avoid poisoning your own people. But I doubt anyone would seriously consider making that a meaningful issue in planning any military operations. On May 12, 2008, at 01:29 , David Farber wrote:________________________________________ From: David Byrden [farber1 () byrden com] Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 3:43 AMFrom: DV Henkel-Wallace [gumby () henkel-wallace org]in the exploding-stationary case stuff exploding in directions other than axially will shift around and take millennia to clear up.Er, there's no such thing as a stationary case. If you put something stationary in space above Earth it will, not surprisingly, fall down. You have to orbit things, extremely fast, to keep them up there. And that is the problem.
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Current thread:
- Fwd: Wi Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock David Farber (May 11)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Wi Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock David Farber (May 11)
- Re: Wi Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock David Farber (May 12)
- Wi Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock David Farber (May 12)
- Wi Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock David Farber (May 12)
- Re: Wi Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock David Farber (May 13)