Spacejunk at 10 o'clock and 5 miles!

[Sundowner]

Doh!
The cockpit recordings from this should be riveting.

Hey Kev!
Any way I could get this added for AI traffic in FS2004?
Thanks, mate!

Regards,
Sun

Flaming space junk narrowly misses jet

Pieces of space junk from a Russian satellite coming out of orbit narrowly missed hitting a jetliner over the Pacific Ocean overnight.

The pilot of a Lan Chile Airbus A340, which was travelling between Santiago, Chile, and Auckland, New Zealand, notified air traffic controllers at Auckland Oceanic Centre after seeing flaming space junk hurtling across the sky just five nautical miles in front of and behind his plane about 10pm last night.

According to a plane spotter, who was tuning into a high frequency radio broadcast at the time, the pilot "reported that the rumbling noise from the space debris could be heard over the noise of the aircraft.

"He described he saw a piece of debris lighting up as it re-entered (the earth's atmosphere).

"He was one very worried pilot, as you would imagine.

"Auckland is talking to (an) Aerolineas Argentinas (pilot) who is travelling (in the) opposite direction at 10 degrees further south asking if they wish to turn back to Auckland.

"They have elected to carry on at the moment......

http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=145&ContentID=24657

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Sundowner
Pieces of space junk from a Russian satellite coming out of orbit narrowly missed hitting a jetliner over the Pacific Ocean overnight.

I suppose there are no other abandoned sattelites then Russian orbiting Earth? During last 15 years other countries launch more possible junk then Russian Federation, and we don't launch anything really heavy any more.

Before 1991 USSR launched about 2000 spacecrafts (IIRC), most of them burned safely decades ago or were planned and sunk, unlike SkyLab. Go calculate a probability of hitting an airliner with a "piece of space-junk".

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Boroda
I suppose there are no other abandoned sattelites then Russian orbiting Earth? During last 15 years other countries launch more possible junk then Russian Federation, and we don't launch anything really heavy any more.

Before 1991 USSR launched about 2000 spacecrafts (IIRC), most of them burned safely decades ago or were planned and sunk, unlike SkyLab. Go calculate a probability of hitting an airliner with a "piece of space-junk".

"Either the time that was indicated to us was incorrect or the satellite de-orbited early."

You would assume that a country that had put the first satellite into orbit would be able to correctly predict a smaller window that the junk would re-enter the atmosphere, but I guess that is expecting too much out of those that make a living by spying and copying advanced engineering techniques.

(Sarcasm intended)

[Sundowner]

I agree, Boroda.

The odds of actual collisions with airliners must be astronomically small.

But there are still many, many pieces of man-made orbital objects swarming about the Earth.
More than one might think...


Ninety-five percent of the objects represented by white dots in this computer-generated illustration are human-made debris.

I read recently that periods of high solar activity causes the upper atmosphere to expand,exerting  drag on lower orbital debris objects and precipitating  early re-entries.

But like you wrote, very low odds of collision with another airborne object indeed.

Regards,
Sun

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
You would assume that a country that had put the first satellite into orbit would be able to correctly predict a smaller window that the junk would re-enter the atmosphere, but I guess that is expecting too much out of those that make a living by spying and copying advanced engineering techniques.

(Sarcasm intended)

I thought I mentioned Skylab, from a nation that put a man on the Moon

99% of "junk" will burn in high atmosphere. Heavier stuff is usually sunk under control "in a specially assiged region of the Pacific aquatory" like Mir.

IIRC Skylab was about 80 tons in one piece, Mir was about the same weight in 5 modules. USSR never launched anything heavier then 20-25 tons that could fall down uncontrolled, to the low orbit. All Kosmos sats that could reach the ground  were probably sunk before 1994.

About copying and spying - look how much effort it took to launch a first US Moon rocket, after USSR already had dark-side photos And now you still can't build long-time life-support systems, American ships are limited to 2 weeks in orbit, all ISS life-support is made here. Look, you are unable to even steel it!

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Sundowner
I agree, Boroda.

The odds of actual collisions with airliners must be astronomically small.

But there are still many, many pieces of man-made orbital objects swarming about the Earth.
More than one might think...


Ninety-five percent of the objects represented by white dots in this computer-generated illustration are human-made debris.

I read recently that periods of high solar activity causes the upper atmosphere to expand,exerting  drag on lower orbital debris objects and precipitating  early re-entries.

But like you wrote, very low odds of collision with another airborne object indeed.

Regards,
Sun

And that just represents the junk they can pick up on their sophisticated tracking devices. Multiply that by 3 and you'll have a real picture of the junk traveling 15,000+ mph in orbit.

Boroda, it was a joke. Guess I have to spell it out for you dumb Russians like we have to for those working in the Boeing Design Center in Mother Russia.

[ROC]

5 Miles?  Geez, if they are gonna cringe at 5 miles than the freeways better lock up tight before there is a catastrophe!

5 Miles, they see falling flaming debris, and then what...go have lunch while they consider the ramifications and procedure to evade?

Everything is a "crisis" these days.

[Boroda]

Rip, Boeing outsourced R&D because we still have real engineers here

(that was sarcasm too )

Again: 99.999% of junk travelling at 8km/s will never reach the ground, it will burn above stratosphere.

You can see 100times more meteors in late August, Leonides meteor stream, then in other seasons. Go figure.  And Leonides enter atmosphere at 11km/s, they travel at parabolic velosity.

[cav58d]

Obviously any object at 15,000 miles per hour, is going to cause fatal damage to anything it comes into contact with (ie space shuttle)...But how small can they be, while still inflicting damage...For example, can a piece of metal, the size of a grain of sand, puncture through the skin of a shuttle and destroy it?

[rpm]

All it has to do is damage a heatshield.

[Boroda]

Originally posted by cav58d
Obviously any object at 15,000 miles per hour, is going to cause fatal damage to anything it comes into contact with (ie space shuttle)...But how small can they be, while still inflicting damage...For example, can a piece of metal, the size of a grain of sand, puncture through the skin of a shuttle and destroy it?

All artificial sattelites are launched in one direction, so relative speed is not 8km/s but muuuuch lower. Leonides coming in at parabolic velosity are much more dangerious then "space junk". They really can hit at 8+11=19km/sec at some moments.

I bet you didn't see "Return from orbit", a Soviet film made in 1985, about a space station crew evacuating after a meteorite hit. http://imdb.com/title/tt0230961/

Their Soyuz ship is also punctured, so the rescue ship pilot can't dock because they rotate uncontrolled, so a board-engineer goes outside (they wear rescue-spacesuits with soft helmets) and uses a spare oxygen tank to stop rotation.

[Boroda]

Originally posted by rpm
All it has to do is damage a heatshield.

Practice: Soviet spaceships orbited totally maybe 100 times longer then all Shuttle missions, and no Soyuz burnt during re-entry.

[Skuzzy]

Rip, you and Borada calm down.  Borada, the only reason Russia did not lift larger payloads into space, was at the time they had no heavy lift launcher like the Saturn V.

And yes, Spacelab was a disaster.

Neither of our countries has a perfect record when it comes to space travel.  So let's just put that aside if you wish to discuss this.

And keep all the personal jabs off the board.  Both of you.

[Wes14]

if i was pilot one of my smart remarks would of been "Dang those aliens cant bomb worth ****"

but still thats still a pretty good distance from falling junk to plane pooting along:noid

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Rip, you and Borada calm down.  Borada, the only reason Russia did not lift larger payloads into space, was at the time they had no heavy lift launcher like the Saturn V.

And yes, Spacelab was a disaster.

Neither of our countries has a perfect record when it comes to space travel.  So let's just put that aside if you wish to discuss this.

And keep all the personal jabs off the board.  Both of you.

Sorry, I didn't mean it Never wanted to offend anyone I thought we just pick on each other as usual, just mind games.

Saturn-V was a greatest piece of design, but USSR got Proton in 1964, 20+ tons at low orbit, mass-produced. Low reliability was the only problem why we didn't orbit Moon before Apollo-8, cosmonauts wrote a petition to Politburo that they want to fly even if the probability of success is as low a 10%, but Bloody Soviet Regime (tm) didn't want people to die. Oh, sorry, second problem was UDMH as a fuel...