Trash
in Space
The first manned space mission was on April 12, 1961. In the past forty-three years since man first made his presence known in space, he has also been carelessly polluting Earth’s orbit with debris from damaged space vehicles, useless pieces of equipment, and your everyday black, plastic bags of trash. This collection of junk has amounted to over ten thousand traceable objects from paint chips to satellites. Although a paint chip does not sound like any type of threat, these objects are traveling at around seventeen-thousand miles per hour. As long as there is no federal restriction on the dumping of garbage into space, millions of dollars will continue to pour into jobs where scientists track this waste, and space will become the place for our overflowing junkyards here on Earth. Still, since not every piece can be monitored, the risk to future explorations remains high as something as small as a silver bullet could cause significant damage to any future outer space mission.
Since
Americans
can be classified as some of the most wasteful beings on this planet,
it is no
wonder why we are running out of room to throw away our trash. With statistics as staggering as the
following taken from Mary Tyne’s article, “Why not throw away trash?”
space
starts to sound like a brilliant alternative to this messy situation. Every Sunday, more than 500,000 trees are
used to produce the 88% of newspapers that are never recycled. We throw
away
enough office and writing paper annually to build a wall twelve feet
high
stretching from
What
would happen
if attentions were actually turned toward space? A
photograph frequently found in space
journals maps out what looks like an intertwined net of vandalized
space
surrounding Earth, covering almost every inch of her orbit. In fact, the same picture has remained a
constant pressure to scientists as they search out ways to improve this
“junkyard” situation. See: http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/Images/StarChild/questions/space_trash.gif.
In reality, after looking at this picture it would seem that space is not a solution after all; that there is not any “space left in space.” After prompted by the question of the pros and cons pertaining to space garbage dumping, Ask a Scientist’s response author, Mortis replied,
“Space is very large compared to Earth. Even if we "threw away" the whole planet, it would be a tiny speck in the vastness of space. There is no danger of filling space with junk. Now there is a problem with filling Earth’s orbit with junk, because Earth’s orbit is a fairly small region of space. But, it takes so much energy to get into Earth’s orbit that it will never be a practical junk heap. We are not even sure it is worth the cost of putting a space station up there, let alone a pile of garbage. Garbage on Earth is something we are just going to have to learn to live with.”
Perhaps the solution doesn’t lie in space, but in a more efficient use of Earth’s resources. On the other hand, an efficient means of throwing away trash outside of Earth’s orbit, according to Mortis, may also be a possible solution.
Logically, an explanation for throwing trash into space may spring from the ignorant assumption that space is uncluttered, and therefore maintains an environment to support a high surplus of foreign material. However, according to W.L. Rathje, “there are 10,000 "resident space objects" - and only 5 percent of them were functioning spacecraft in 1997 (Rathje, W.L.).” There is real garbage, too. During its first decade in orbit, for example, “more than 200 objects drifted away from the Soviets' Mir space station, most of them cloaked inside garbage bags. Although, the most trash is accounted from approximately 150 satellites that have blown up or fallen apart, either deliberately or accidentally. They left a trail of 7,000 fragments large enough (over 10 centimeters) to be tracked from Earth (Rathje, W.L).” According to these statements there is definitely room for improvement, not trash. Adding more garbage to Earth’s atmosphere would only present problems that would create more risk to future space exploration. Actually, some of these problems have already proven themselves to exist.
Knowing
the
trajectory of space junk is very important to our future in space. In
1979, a
one hundred and fifty ton Skylab crashed into the outback of
Obviously small pieces of debris can significantly damage spacecraft because of the speeds at which they travel. “A ten-centimeter long piece of space trash can cause as much damage as twenty-five sticks of dynamite!” (White). Different sources have claimed space to be a great alternative to the growing trash problem on Earth. However, looking at the situation metaphorically, the seemingly innocent trash objects being relocated into space suddenly are bombs and booby traps set to work against what NASA, for example, has set out to accomplish. With government funded multi-million dollar missions, errors so easily avoidable such as trash relocation do not seem worth the risk.
This
is just a mere
summary of how space polluting has already created tribulations, it is
not all
inclusive. There is no federal
restriction on the dumping of garbage into space. In
the absence of this regulation, space
missions will continue to risk their longevity to suddenly significant
pieces
of scrap as small as a centimeter in length. Based
on the gathered evidence, dumping trash
into space would, be and is, an unintelligent decision that causes many
more
problems than it could ever possibly solve.
Before further contaminating Earth’s orbit, more thought has to
go into
creating an efficient trash collection service or other means of
improving the
situation instead of continuing to add to it.
Trash in space gives an entire new meaning to the idea of
pollution.
Works Cited
Roybal, Robert. Stein, Charles. Tlomak, Pawel. Wilso, Warren. “A Review of Hypervelocity Debris Testing at the Air Force Research Laboratory.” p. 357-369. 5 Feb. 2004. Space Debris 2. 01 Nov. 2004 <http://www.kluweronline.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/issn/1388-3828/contents>
