NASA part 1
They know what needs to be done.
They only don't want to say it.
It is not glamorous like putting men on the moon. It does not seem immediately important or beneficial.
Yet getting into a higher orbit to service the Hubble Telescope was not easy.
Trying to steer through a huge debris field is dangerous, try doing it traveling very fast. Like on the way to another planet.
Nobody is going anywhere. We're surrounded, by space junk.
It would be a precision job. Cleaning up old toys. Made of very durable, shiny, reflective metals. Bouncing sunlight back at earth.
They would not want to scrap a satellite that was still in service.
Some pieces are smaller than a coin, yet still dangerous.
It's not going to clean itself up, and they keep sending more up.
Launch times are determined by openings in the debris.
At reentry it is not so easy to pick a time and place.
It would be like trying to land a jetliner on a freeway during rush hour.
The command module was compact, solid, and sturdy, designed with one overriding consideration: to survive the fiery heat of reentry as it abandoned the service module and slammed back into the atmosphere at the tremendous speed of 25,000 miles an hour. It was a descendant of Mercury and Gemini, but its task was much more difficult. The speed of reentry from the Moon is nearly one and one-half times as fast as returning from Earth orbit; to slow down from that speed required the dissipation of great amounts of energy. In fact, there is enough energy at reentry to melt and vaporize all the material in the command module several times over, so the spacecraft had to be protected by an ablative heat shield that charred and slowly burned away, thereby protecting all that it surrounded. The command module was also crammed with equipment and subsystems; and of course three men lived in it for most of the lunar journey, and one of them for all of it. It was cone-shaped, with a blunt face for reentry; it was 11 feet long, 13 feet in diameter, and weighed 6 tons.
They only don't want to say it.
It is not glamorous like putting men on the moon. It does not seem immediately important or beneficial.
Yet getting into a higher orbit to service the Hubble Telescope was not easy.
Trying to steer through a huge debris field is dangerous, try doing it traveling very fast. Like on the way to another planet.
Nobody is going anywhere. We're surrounded, by space junk.
It would be a precision job. Cleaning up old toys. Made of very durable, shiny, reflective metals. Bouncing sunlight back at earth.
They would not want to scrap a satellite that was still in service.
Some pieces are smaller than a coin, yet still dangerous.
It's not going to clean itself up, and they keep sending more up.
Launch times are determined by openings in the debris.
At reentry it is not so easy to pick a time and place.
It would be like trying to land a jetliner on a freeway during rush hour.
The command module was compact, solid, and sturdy, designed with one overriding consideration: to survive the fiery heat of reentry as it abandoned the service module and slammed back into the atmosphere at the tremendous speed of 25,000 miles an hour. It was a descendant of Mercury and Gemini, but its task was much more difficult. The speed of reentry from the Moon is nearly one and one-half times as fast as returning from Earth orbit; to slow down from that speed required the dissipation of great amounts of energy. In fact, there is enough energy at reentry to melt and vaporize all the material in the command module several times over, so the spacecraft had to be protected by an ablative heat shield that charred and slowly burned away, thereby protecting all that it surrounded. The command module was also crammed with equipment and subsystems; and of course three men lived in it for most of the lunar journey, and one of them for all of it. It was cone-shaped, with a blunt face for reentry; it was 11 feet long, 13 feet in diameter, and weighed 6 tons.