• Current Events & Politics
    Welcome Guest
    Please read before posting:
    Forum Guidelines Bluelight Rules
  • Current Events & Politics Moderators: tryptakid | Foreigner

Why We May Soon Be Trapped on Earth

CFC

CFC

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Mar 9, 2013
Messages
18,299
Location
The Shire
Why We May Not Be Able to Visit Space in the Future

Interesting YouTube video if anyway fancies a gander...


 
I saw that video.. You'd be surprised how much space is available up there. I mean, with as much crap that up there. We hardly ever hear anything colliding with one another that's important. Or that much shit is interfering with the constant rocket payloads being sent up to the ISS
 
Ask your self this;

Why are other planets like Saturn not all screwed up? Some planets have millions of satellites and they tend to accumulate around the equator.
 
There would have to be SO MUCH shit for it to actually block the ability to traverse it, though. I mean satellites and other objects are each quite small compared to the amount of space out there. It's like the asteroid belt, the common conception of it is that it's a minefield of rocks, but in fact, due to the sheer amount of area, they are scattered widely, not really in view of each other, even though there are a lot of them.
 
Swerlz said:
I saw that video.. You'd be surprised how much space is available up there. I mean, with as much crap that up there. We hardly ever hear anything colliding with one another that's important. Or that much shit is interfering with the constant rocket payloads being sent up to the ISS
Click to expand...

Yes but it's worth noting that the reason for that is that there are people monitoring the important satellites and keeping them out of the path of debree. If they all stopped working, eventually they would end up hitting shit. It wouldn't even take that long all things considered.

That said I still don't consider this a particularly pressing concern.
 
Spacejunk may be harmless, until you speed him up to 20,000 mph and point him at an incoming vehicle also doing 20,000 mph. You'll probably never meet him, but you'd only meet him once.

I heard somewhere that our best rocket systems so far, have a fuel/weight ratio of about 0.96. Which means we're right at the edge of getting into orbit at all. To launch a 4 pound payload takes 96 pounds of fuel.

So if the Earth was just a little bit bigger, that ratio becomes 0.99 - 1.0, and you would need a vehicle of pure fuel to ever get into orbit.
 
Xorkoth said:
There would have to be SO MUCH shit for it to actually block the ability to traverse it, though. I mean satellites and other objects are each quite small compared to the amount of space out there. It's like the asteroid belt, the common conception of it is that it's a minefield of rocks, but in fact, due to the sheer amount of area, they are scattered widely, not really in view of each other, even though there are a lot of them.
Click to expand...

98% of visible space is in fact actual SPACE moreso than rocks and satellites and other shit. So yeah. Can you travel through empty space <:'D
 
I realise that even with all the crap we have up there, there's a lot of free space. But the point they were raising in the video is that once those bits of junk start hitting each other, they start hitting each other exponentially more quickly. The result of which is an un-measureable quantity of tiny specks of paint, detritus, bits of coolant etc which, because they're flying around at such high speeds, can damage or destroy most things.
 
And who could have ever imagined that microscopic bits of plastic would become a floating minicontinent the size of Texas?

I will never underestimate humanity's capability to foul its own nest.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top