Talk:Space debris/Archive 1

Planetoids.

What about the terms planetoid and planetesimal? Where do they fit into the schema? --Dante Alighieri 09:10 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Planetoid appears to be synonymous with asteroid, and planetisimals aren't around any more since they formed into planets. I'll mention them, though. Bryan

Does anyone really call planets "debris"? -- Oliver P. 10:39 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I just wanted to make sure all objects were included. I wouldn't be surprised if some astronomers consider them as such, though; in astronomical terms, "metal" is any element heavier than helium. :) Do you think this article should perhaps have a different title? Bryan

I'd definitely like a different title. When I saw "space debris" I expected a discussion of burned-out rocket stages, lost bolts, and such that humans have scattered in nearby space. Not a list of all matter smaller than stars. Vicki Rosenzweig 16:43 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

How about "solar system objects"? Solar system has a list with that title that seems to cover somewhat similar turf, though in a different way (it lists all large moons by name, for example). "Space debris" could then become an article about the artificial junk in Earth orbit. Bryan

This page is excellent. How about incorporating it directly into solar system, high up in the article somewhere? If you are worried about length of article, I would suggest punting the list of large moons into a separate article: this schema is more informative -- hike395

That works for me. Natural satellite already has a table that lists all moons categorized by size category along one axis and planet along the other axis, so the list of moons in solar system is actually somewhat redundant and inferior; I think the list can simply be deleted. Bryan

When the article says "paint chips," does it mean so literally? --NeuronExMachina 05:23, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely. Even a paint flake can cause major damage at orbital speeds (up to 11 km/s) ··gracefool |☺ 07:37, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Lost glove

Does anyone know the story of how that glove got lost? I'm curious too. Wadsworth 03:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

In 1965, during the first american space walk, the Gemini 4 astronaut Edward White, lost a glove. For a month, the glove stayed on orbit with a speed of 28,000 km / h, becoming the most dangerous garment in history Mr_mattyp 17:53, 26 February 2006 (GMT)

What about Mir?

Isn't a space debri example? why it isn't even mencioned on the article??? 200.233.133.203 11:06, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

It burned up during re-entry. If anything was discarded before re-entry please add the reference and info to the article. -- Jeandré, 2007-07-29t11:12z

Russian Spy Satellite v Latin American Airbus

What is the source for the item in the History section stating

In 2006, wreckage from a plummeting Russian spy satellite whizzed dangerously close to a Latin American Airbus carrying 270 passengers. ?

The NZ Herald 29 March 2007 printed news of a LAN Chile flight reporting seeing satellite debris five nautical miles in front of and behind the plane. Next day the story was that experts doubted the debris was from a Russian satellite and that NASA said the satellite reentered at the expected time 12 hours earlier.

See

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10431449 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10431624

Taringi (talk) 02:12, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

2006 "near hit" of Latin American Jumbo Jet

"In 2006, wreckage from a Russian spy satellite passed dangerously close to a Latin American Airbus carrying 270 passengers, reentering over the Pacific Ocean which is considered among the safest places in the world to bring down satellites due to its unpopulated vastness."

From what I read the point of view of the pilots made them think it was much closer... Enough so that they had to preform evasive maneuvers when in actuality it was some hundred km away. Should we make some note to this effect? Cs302b (talk) 10:23, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Collisional cascading

There ought to be a section on Collisional Cascading instead of the somewhat miss-named Kessler Syndrome link. The proper reference is abstracted at ADS:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1991AdSpR..11...63K

--aajacksoniv 15:48, 17 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aajacksoniv (talk • contribs)

organizing sections

I tried to put things in the right order. I moved Gabbard diagrams section to within Tracking section. I am not sure if it belongs in Measurement section, but at least it fixes the white space problem that existed before.

I put creation and impact events under Incidents section. If anyone wants to monkey around with this layout, please be my guest.--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:11, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Section on cleaning up debris?

Shouldn't there be a section on this article covering the clean up of space debris?--Hontogaichiban (talk) 03:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

If there are sources about it, sure!--Knulclunk (talk) 13:04, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

More use of bullets?

I find this article hard to read because it just keep going and going with example after example. Sometimes I think "didn't I read this example a couple of paragraphs back?" I think it would be more easily scanned, and hence more comprehensible, if there were more bulletted lists. Do you agree or disagree? Matthew C. Clarke 08:15, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Lists are generally detested by reviewers, but in this case I think that's not the real problem, it's the repetition? If that's the case, would you mind looking for examples where the same examples are really close together - like a couple of paragraphs? Also note that they might be repeated so they can talk about different aspects of the same event. But if this isn't the case, cleanup will improve things. I fixed the two you noted above. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:05, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll re-read it soon to rethink the flow. There is a lot of really good stuff in this article, but I just think it is very dry reading. Matthew C. Clarke 09:58, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Copy editing

Maury Markowitz has asked me to pop in and do a bit of copy editing for this article. If I have any questions with respect to content or context, or suggestions that will significantly alter the format of the article, I will leave them here. Thanks for the opportunity to pitch in, this is a very interesting subject and I can see a lot of work has gone into this article. Risker (talk) 23:09, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

crebit?

The article includes the word "crebit". Is there such a thing, or is that a typo? Matthew C. Clarke 07:28, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Tons or Tonnes?

Is the reference to tons supposed to be tonnes? If so can someone update the page. If it is infact tons can someone convert it to tonnes and remove the tons altogether. Imperial measurements should end at 99km, there is no need for such a primitive and senseless measurement system in relation to space. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.111.162.127 (talk) 20:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

LOL! By Wikipedia standard Units of measurement we should use tons. After all, it's mostly our crap that's up there, so we get to use our units. But seriously, go ahead and add the conversion after, in parenthesis. 100 tons = 91 tonnes. Have a blast. --Knulclunk (talk) 03:55, 8 March 2008 (UTC)