Satellite Collision Puts Hubble in Jeopardy

Tokamak said:
We should worry about satellite damage, a cascade destruction of satellites would be devastating to the global economy as well as our military.
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I'm more concerned who was behind it- The odds of a satellite striking another in a direct hit like this is astronomical.

In short it was no accident, someone was testing something.

Don't take my word look into it.
 
Who would care to prove satellites can crash together? Satellites can easily be taken down by missiles, they're like sitting ducks and all governments know that. They'll probably be the first things to go if there's ever another big war.
 
TechieSooner said:
For the record, when this bill fails and does not recover the economy like Obama is hoping it does, and also drives this country into the freaking ground with all the pork spending in it, the Republican party and 7 Democrats were against it.
I think we will all see sooner than we thought that things weren't so bad after all.
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I love how all of you repubs are so ready to point the finger if the bailout fails but what you guys continue to neglect is the fact that you guys never brought anything of usefulness to the argument/table.

All the Repubs did was say, "No we cant do this, we cant do that. That plan wont work, that plan is going to fail." But never once did they give a better plan and even when the democrats tweaked the bill and adjusted it to the catering of the republicans liking they still didnt approve it.

Talk about bipartianship at its best from the republicans.
 
Repubs were locked out of the discussions that resulted in said 'tweaking'.

Lets say I give you a credit card, that you have to pay back, and that none of the credit line can be used to purchase assets that can appreciate in value. You have to pay the card back. Tell me how you can get ahead financially by maxing that card out, while at the same time your pay rate gets cut.
 
gdonovan said:
Congress has been under Democrat control for the last two years and that is where the spending bills come from. Democrats spend like drunks when allowed, see current bill being rammed through Congress.
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I love how Republicans like to neglect how they controlled both the house, the senate, and the presidency for the six years prior to the last 2 yrs. Not to mention great the Dems controlled the Senate but they didnt control the house or the presidency. Theres only so much one can do with only just the Senate, good or bad for the country. And lets not forget to bring up the two Justices that Bush nominated just for the hell of it.

That ye ole favorite line of the Repubs of saying, "But you controlled the Senate for the last 2 yrs!" is a pretty meaningless and moot point.

And as for your last point on spending that has to be the most laughable comment I've heard. Theres plenty of charts and stuff for you to google for yourself but I'll give you this for starters:

Natl_Debt_Chart_2006.gif


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2678226
 
lol, Obama's little bar is already off the chart and past the top of my monitor. :p
 
To attempt to fix at what rep's did(careless greedy damage).:eek:
 
DemonDiablo said:
And as for your last point on spending that has to be the most laughable comment I've heard. Theres plenty of charts and stuff for you to google for yourself but I'll give you this for starters:
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LOL! From the democrat underground, no bias there eh?

I see the charts fail to point out how much the feds raked in under Bush tax cuts and how Clinton gutted the military to get his "surplus"

How about this chart?

chart2.gif


Nothing like hanging trillions of dollars of pork around my daughters neck?

Tax cuts stimulate the economy, not goverment pork.

I hope you dems love the crap sandwich that has been served up, it's going to be on the table for a long time.
 
ashmedai said:
A few issues there. One, aiming as you said. Two, beam coherence and attenuation by the atmosphere. Three, it's easy to destabilize an orbit so that an object falls down, but hard to make it go up - alternately, it's easy to push it down but all sorts of fun to make it go towards you when you're pushing.
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Four, lasers still obey the inverse square law as far as power, meaning they don't stay a pinpoint they expand. Lasers used to shoot towards to the moon reflectors, get to be about 7km wide when they reach the moon! Granted satellites in orbit are quite a bit closer, but still you'd need an impossibly large power source for that laser to have any destruction capability I'd guess.

Diablo2K said:
Theres so much crap up there floating around before to long it will become unsafe to go up there anymore. Theres thousands of nuts, bolts, and little pieces of who knows what. And there all traveling at 17,000 MPH, fast enough for a grain of sand to kill an astonaught with ease, let alone a small piece of hardware!
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Well the astronuts hopefully will be traveling at that speed in that same direction. The real hazards come with the junk that isn't flying around in the same direction.
 
[21CW]killerofall;1033711561 said:
Actually lasers from the ground would be much cheaper but you couldn't exactly hit with a high degree of accuracy (it would be like threading a needle form 100 miles away).
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I dunno, the US shot a freaking satellite out of orbit with a missile... Who's to say we can't design a laser to do the same thing?

Hornet said:
I think it is an important step towards colonization of other planet, which, if its something that we can do some day, I think that would be like one of the most advance science and tech capabilities ever achieved by humans
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I personally never see this happening on the scale of which Popular Science thinks it'll happen.

Most of the stuff you rely upon comes from earth. Even if people do live on other planets, they'd still be tied to earth to survive.

And what happens if unforseen circumstances stop the transport between earth and the planet? Doom for all those who live there.


I'd say cleaning up the space junk is something that needs to be done. However you're forgetting who will foot the bill??? No country wants to do that unless there would be other uses for the technology it would take to send the junk into a lower orbit to burn up in re-entry.
 
Anyone who's taken basic college Econ should know spending has a greater effect than tax cuts... It's called the Money Multiplier. Look it up.

As for the satellite... Some company is out a lot of money. Bailout time!

And for the hubble... I almost think it needs to be randomly destroyed just so we can get on with bigger and better things. Sometimes I think we put way too much effort in trying to save a doomed project when we could be bringing about the next big thing.

Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
 
Pyroja said:
Anyone who's taken basic college Econ should know spending has a greater effect than tax cuts... It's called the Money Multiplier. Look it up.
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It's called trillions in inflationary spending. It has more of an effect than money multiplier. Look it up. ;)
 
I'd call it inflationary if the dollar weren't as strong against the Euro as it ever has been. A year ago it was 1.60 to Euro. Now it floats around 1.25. Where's this inflation I keep hearing folks freak out about? Heck, I've heard talk of deflation being the concern now. At least that makes sense.

I'd consider launching a new telescope an appropriate use of tax dollars. Doubt it'll happen anytime soon(er), though.
 
If we had the money to spend, then yes, spending is good. But we don't. We're PRINTING it. Printing money devalues the existing currency. Look at Germany after WWII. It had to print tons of money to pay off it debts. This led to hyper-inflation. This is simple Econ 101. Coupled with the fact we're spending it on tons of absolutely absurd programs doesn't help the matter much either.

More spaceships, less frisbee golf courses!!!
 
More spaceships, less frisbee golf courses!!!
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and more pork...(from both parties, by the way)....
--$248 million for furniture at the new Dept. of Homeland Security headquarters
--$600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees
--$5.5 million for “energy efficiency initiatives” at the VA “National Cemetery Administration
 
I think it is just NASA begging for money. If you think about this when 2 objects colide they will decelerate. This will cause most of the debree to fall to Earth. A small portion will go out of orbit and like what remains has les than .0000000001% of hitting something. Think about this. You have an area of between 300 and 800 miles altitude. considering the Earth has a diameter of almost 8000 miles this will give an area of about 45 billion cubic miles to spread these 10,000 particles across. To put this in perspective... think of all the planes in the air on any given day and what the chances of them colliding... now picture that the planes are the size of a BB. Now considering they are only tracking 600 peices from the collision right now and likely 90% will fall out of orbit. Also think of all the micro meteorites that his the Earth every day. After a bit of searching I was able to find that about 18,000 to 84,000 meteorites bigger than 10 grams per year... If you figure in meteorite dust falling and it turns into about 40,000-80,000 tons of debree a year.
 
gdonovan said:
LOL! From the democrat underground, no bias there eh?

Tax cuts stimulate the economy, not goverment pork.

I hope you dems love the crap sandwich that has been served up, it's going to be on the table for a long time.
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haha funny. I can see how my rants can look as though I'm a democrat, but I'm not. I vote for the best person. If McCain didnt pick Palin he'd be a lot closer to getting my vote but that was a huge misstep on his part, oh well. Everything I said so far is just me calling it how it is. Or simply put stating the facts...

And tax cuts dont stimulate economies. Tax cuts dont create new money, its just keeps on recirculating the same old money in a different way which leaves you... right back where you started. Oh wait actually it leaves you a few steps, in the wrong direction, from where you started. Funny how those tax cuts work eh?
 
DemonDiablo said:
haha funny. I can see how my rants can look as though I'm a democrat, but I'm not. I vote for the best person. If McCain didnt pick Palin he'd be a lot closer to getting my vote but that was a huge misstep on his part, oh well. Everything I said so far is just me calling it how it is. Or simply put stating the facts...

And tax cuts dont stimulate economies. Tax cuts dont create new money, its just keeps on recirculating the same old money in a different way which leaves you... right back where you started. Oh wait actually it leaves you a few steps, in the wrong direction, from where you started. Funny how those tax cuts work eh?
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So wait, you think that by allowing a Dollar to pass through as few hands as possible generates more revenue for taxation purposes? That by not allowing the consumer to spend more of their own money helps the economy more? That by allowing people to buy items they wouldn't be able to had they had additional (not taxed) money in their bank account doesn't create 'new money'? What about the inventor of the 'improved widget' whoose sales aren't enough to get him to next month because there's not enough left over money after taxes. Even Kennedy (JFK) realized that to empower business, you had to empower the consumer. How else can you do that but let them spend? (more)


'The best thing you can do for an economy is to buy something and throw it away as soon as possible and replace it with another.' -Drucker
Drucker said that
 
DemonDiablo said:
haha funny. I can see how my rants can look as though I'm a democrat, but I'm not.
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If you are posting links from democrat underground you have left no room for doubt as to which party you vote for.

And tax cuts dont stimulate economies.
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Don't pay much attention to history do you?

Tax cuts stimulate the economies, out of control government spending destroys it, simple as that and proven by history.
 
Russian general says U.S. may have planned satellite collision

03/03/2009 13:01 MOSCOW, March 3 (RIA Novosti) - A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said.

According to official reports, one of 66 satellites owned by Iridium, a U.S. telecoms company, and the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, launched in 1993 and believed to be defunct, collided on February 10 about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia.

However, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said in an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday that the U.S. satellite involved in the collision was used by the U.S. military as part of the "dual-purpose" Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007.

Orbital Express was a space mission managed by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and a team led by engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC).

According to the DARPA, the program was "to validate the technical feasibility of robotic, autonomous on-orbit refueling and reconfiguration of satellites to support a broad range of future U.S. national security and commercial space programs."

Orbital Express was launched in March 2007 as part of the U.S. Air Force Space Test Program's STP-1 mission. It tested a prototype servicing satellite (ASTRO) and a surrogate next generation serviceable satellite (NextSat). The demonstration program met all the mission success criteria and was officially completed in July 2007.

Shershnev claims the U.S. military decided to continue with the project to "develop technology that would allow monitoring and inspections of orbital spacecraft by fully-automated satellites equipped with robotic devices."

The February collision could be an indication that the U.S. has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating 'hostile satellites,' including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center, the general said.
 
Russia also claims due to the economy the US will be broken into 6 states, Alaska will become part of Russia, and then Russia and China will be the new backbone of the world

:rolleyes:
 
gdonovan said:
The February collision could be an indication that the U.S. has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating 'hostile satellites,' including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center, the general said.
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I love lines like these. I guess they must have "destroy Russian satellite" on a keyboard shortcut. :p
 
lol, that would be like something you'd see in Austin Powers. :p
 
HOCP4ME said:
I love lines like these. I guess they must have "destroy Russian satellite" on a keyboard shortcut. :p
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You are aware that the Air Force currently has at least 2 satelites that are being used to "inspect" other satelites in orbit?

Google the odds of 2 satelites in orbit colliding with each other, I'd have a better chance of hitting the powerball lottery.
 
Hornet said:
I think it is an important step towards colonization of other planet, which, if its something that we can do some day, I think that would be like one of the most advance science and tech capabilities ever achieved by humans

Besides, I think we humans have wasted enough money on finding new ways on mass killing each other, I would rather those money being spent on space technology :D
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I hope humans are never capable of colonizing another plant, we already are fucking this one bad enough.
 
Norad could answer the question. Did the Russian satelite change orbit and smash into the US satelite, or was it the other way around? The track it all on radar 24/7, so?

We will eventually grab an iron moon from Saturn, and smash it head first into Mars, restarting Mar's core as a molten iron magnet to give it a magnetoshpere. Then once its cooled down again, with a magnetic feild protecting its atmosphere, we will bring Encelodis in behind Mars for a soft landing, giving it oceans of water, and we can begin colonizing a few thousand years later.

Figure it'll take us about 500,000 years to get this accomplished. Call me Nostradamus II. :eek::rolleyes::p

I like serious NASA spending as a stimulus, nothing like needing thousands more high paying science and engineering employees... Americans... to jump start the middle class, AND we get cool space shit out of it too.

Start with 20 new Titanium Shuttles with modern electronics, as well as the new booster program. Then build a nuclear-plasma-ion impulse engine for an interplanetary ship to pop around the solar system with. Liquid Iron cooled nuclear reactor, powering a massive ion engine ejecting iron plasma to achieve very high speeds... fast enough to go back and forth to Mars in a couple weeks rather than years.

Hmmm, now how do we make Phasers? And Phton Torpedo's... damn they are cool sounding. :cool:
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
Norad could answer the question. Did the Russian satelite change orbit and smash into the US satelite, or was it the other way around? The track it all on radar 24/7, so?

We will eventually grab an iron moon from Saturn, and smash it head first into Mars, restarting Mar's core as a molten iron magnet to give it a magnetoshpere. Then once its cooled down again, with a magnetic feild protecting its atmosphere, we will bring Encelodis in behind Mars for a soft landing, giving it oceans of water, and we can begin colonizing a few thousand years later.

Figure it'll take us about 500,000 years to get this accomplished. Call me Nostradamus II. :eek::rolleyes::p

I like serious NASA spending as a stimulus, nothing like needing thousands more high paying science and engineering employees... Americans... to jump start the middle class, AND we get cool space shit out of it too.

Start with 20 new Titanium Shuttles with modern electronics, as well as the new booster program. Then build a nuclear-plasma-ion impulse engine for an interplanetary ship to pop around the solar system with. Liquid Iron cooled nuclear reactor, powering a massive ion engine ejecting iron plasma to achieve very high speeds... fast enough to go back and forth to Mars in a couple weeks rather than years.

Hmmm, now how do we make Phasers? And Phton Torpedo's... damn they are cool sounding. :cool:
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Carbon fiber shuttle IMO ;-)
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
We will eventually grab an iron moon from Saturn, and smash it head first into Mars, restarting Mar's core as a molten iron magnet to give it a magnetoshpere. Then once its cooled down again, with a magnetic feild protecting its atmosphere, we will bring Encelodis in behind Mars for a soft landing, giving it oceans of water, and we can begin colonizing a few thousand years later.

Figure it'll take us about 500,000 years to get this accomplished. Call me Nostradamus II. :eek::rolleyes::p
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yeah, it's a shame that Mars' mass is relatively small and, thus, it does not have a strong enough gravitational pull to hold on to a thick atmosphere that would be similar to the one on Earth.

let's terraform! i wouldn't mind living on Mars if it was habitable.
 
This isn't a new situation. In January 2007, the Chinese pissed off the world's space agencies by performing an anti-satellite missile test and blowing up one of their own satellites. It was estimated that the amount of space debris that was tracked by NASA and could pose a threat to the shuttle, the space station and satellites nearly doubled after the incident..
 
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