April 13, 2008: Pigs In Space

[Trilby]

We were promised a moon base by now, weren't we? Vacations on the moon? Fishing in ancient moon volcano holes for sexy moon mermaids and mermen? all that stuff the brochure promised?

[Eclipse]

This is what's making space launches more and more difficult. Hopefully someone comes up with a good way of getting rid of that debris. Does anyone remember seeing this joked about in the trailers of the future Pixar film, Wall-E?

[The 42]

Originally Posted by Eclipse

Does anyone remember seeing this joked about in the trailers of the future Pixar film, Wall-E?

Yeah, I was just thinking about that.
Another thought: If the only place we're getting our resources is Earth, then we WILL eventually run out of metals, or if we find a way to fabricate metal from something else, then we'll run out of mass. All that debris would be much more useful brought back to earth and melted down than flung off into space...
Too bad the only people in a position to actually do anything about it are too short-sighted to care!

[YellowBolt]

Originally Posted by The 42

Yeah, I was just thinking about that.
Another thought: If the only place we're getting our resources is Earth, then we WILL eventually run out of metals, or if we find a way to fabricate metal from something else, then we'll run out of mass. All that debris would be much more useful brought back to earth and melted down than flung off into space...
Too bad the only people in a position to actually do anything about it are too short-sighted to care!

And how do you propose we actually go about doing this? The cargo bay on the space shuttle has only enough room to hold 60 by 15 feet of debris, not to mention how you actually plan on getting that garbage into the cargo area. There's also the issue of finding a way to manoeuver your spaceship into position while using as little expensive rocket fuel as possible.

Basically, present tech is nowhere close to being advanced enough to clean up space debris.