How many satellites?

[anonymous-user]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydbbd-4oEds

How does anything heading into space avoid all this lot?

[Dirty Boy]

El stovey said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydbbd-4oEds

How does anything heading into space avoid all this lot?

They are ace drivers?

[Munter]

Well the earth is a lot bigger than it looks in that video. If I said there were 13,000 humans in Wales you'd not worry about accidentilly running into one. And the further out those satelites are the more "sapce" there is to use up.

[jmorgan]

http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/

Look for the links to the big bits that make it down

[anonymous-user]

jmorgan said:

http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/

Look for the links to the big bits that make it down

Great picture.

[jeevescat]

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[patmahe]

You think its bad for us, imagine being a poor alien trying to nip down to grab someone for some anal probing

[SkinnyBoy]

my last anal probing was delayed exactly because of this reason....

[anonymous-user]

jmorgan said:

Look for the links to the big bits that make it down

Christ.

NASA said:

This is the main propellant tank of the second stage of a Delta 2 launch vehicle which landed near Georgetown, TX, on 22 January 1997. This approximately 250 kg tank is primarily a stainless steel structure and survived reentry relatively intact

[Timmy35]

They have a projection of this at the Science museum....the earth is surrounded by about 40,000 satellites....it's an absolute swarm of the buggers. I wonder if there could ever be a chain reaction where one small collission could send out debris that hit a load of other satellites and so on a so fourth until the whole thing became unstable.

[mel]

Relatively although it sounds like it's crowded it is comparable to placing a single marble in the middle of Ireland then throwing another one from mainland Britain and being worried about the 2 hitting each other.

[Timmy35]

mel said:

Relatively although it sounds like it's crowded it is comparable to placing a single marble in the middle of Ireland then throwing another one from mainland Britain and being worried about the 2 hitting each other.

Oh okay...so I can take the colander off my head and stop panic buying tinned food then?

are you sure......they did look VERY close together at the science museum

Edited by Timmy35 on Tuesday 9th September 09:44

[Einion Yrth]

It's not the stuff you can see that's the problem, it's the little crap, flecks of paint, screws, that sort of thing, they are all potentially travelling very fast relative to a vehicle, lots of kinetic energy and pretty much invisible.

[anonymous-user]

Timmy35 said:

mel said:

Relatively although it sounds like it's crowded it is comparable to placing a single marble in the middle of Ireland then throwing another one from mainland Britain and being worried about the 2 hitting each other.

Oh okay...so I can take the colander off my head and stop panic buying tinned food then?

are you sure......they did look VERY close together at the science museum

It's not just the satellites, there's loads of other 'space stuff' (technical term) stuck in orbit like bits of old rockets and various debris.

[JVaughan]

El stovey said:

jmorgan said:

Look for the links to the big bits that make it down

Christ.

NASA said:

This is the main propellant tank of the second stage of a Delta 2 launch vehicle which landed near Georgetown, TX, on 22 January 1997. This approximately 250 kg tank is primarily a stainless steel structure and survived reentry relatively intact

Who owns that ? I mean NASA discarded it .. whats the scrap value of something like that ?

[mel]

Timmy35 said:

mel said:

Relatively although it sounds like it's crowded it is comparable to placing a single marble in the middle of Ireland then throwing another one from mainland Britain and being worried about the 2 hitting each other.

Oh okay...so I can take the colander off my head and stop panic buying tinned food then?

are you sure......they did look VERY close together at the science museum

Not the faintest idea, I made it up

Don't believe everything you read on the tinterweb

[Timmy35]

mel said:

Timmy35 said:

mel said:

Relatively although it sounds like it's crowded it is comparable to placing a single marble in the middle of Ireland then throwing another one from mainland Britain and being worried about the 2 hitting each other.

Oh okay...so I can take the colander off my head and stop panic buying tinned food then?

are you sure......they did look VERY close together at the science museum

Not the faintest idea, I made it up

Don't believe everything you read on the tinterweb

Bugger now I'll be at the back of the queue of panic buyers!

If anyone hasn't been for a while the Space section at the Science Musuem really is rather good. I'll be giving that whole 'Welcome' wing a miss next time though.

[Jock Strap]

If Google earth is a collection of satellite pictures, taken by some of those 13,000 satellites, there must be more satelittes taking pictures of those 13,000 satellites in google earth. So just how many satellites are there?

[Munter]

Jock Strap said:

If Google earth is a collection of satellite pictures, taken by some of those 13,000 satellites, there must be more satelittes taking pictures of those 13,000 satellites in google earth. So just how many satellites are there?

Somewhere around 40,000 I think.

[Timmy35]

Jock Strap said:

If Google earth is a collection of satellite pictures, taken by some of those 13,000 satellites, there must be more satelittes taking pictures of those 13,000 satellites in google earth. So just how many satellites are there?

As an aside I convinced a girl in the office that Google Earth images on my Ipod Touch were live, and that I had watched her drive from her house to the train station yesterday morning and was keeping "an eye on her"