Wednesday, July 12, 2017

All of this douchebaggery is Sci-fi's fault.

I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, but Mr S. is. I think they recycle the same old stale story line. Humans are evil and are ruing the earth. That is pretty much all sci-fi-fi is these days.

Almost every time we watch sci-fi and it has that plot line I look at Mr S. and say - this is all your peoples fault! This is the reason people believe stupid things about the earth.

So I had to laugh a little inside when I was talking to a guy I know about those cube satellites. Immediately he freaked out about space junk. He's like - this is so dangerous.

Me - well most of this stuff is going to burn up in the atmosphere.

Him - No it won't!

Me - Well.... what stuff has fallen to the ground?

Him - No - it's going to hit other stuff in space. All you need is a grain of sand to hit the space station.

Me - Yeah. That's true, but the space station is still up there. So nothing must have hit it yet.

Him - Well, they don't tell you everything. When I saw that movie Gravity it really freaked me out.

He even said the words at some point in the conversation - "you know how we are ruining the earth"?

I'm like - the Earth is going to burn out one day!

I'm routinely shocked at how many people tell me we are ruing the earth. All small talk eventually turns to this. I swear. Considering how many people we have on on this planet I think we aren't doing too bad honestly.

Also I just feel like that's a very first world problem. You know my deepest fear is? Being homeless and I'm not doing too bad. Not that the earth is a little warmer or dirtier. If all you have to worry about is us ruining the earth - I just have to roll my eyes. We are living longer than ever! Do you you know how many people are living to 100 these days? A LOT. Humans are sure doing a shitty job of ruining the earth by that standard.

2 comments:

  1. First, let's say hello to the little tool bag that could ...

    http://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=33442

    Optimally, this is what should happen, but it took nearly a year.

    November 1998 was a busy month -- not only did the ISS launch, but the ISS left behind a bunch of crap, including a bunch of cubesats that have not yet deorbited.

    http://www.n2yo.com/browse/?y=1998&m=11

    WOOHOO THE TEXAS AGGIES STILL HAVE THEIR MIDGET SATELLITE IN SPACE! WOOHOO!
    Oh, wait, it's probably completely useless at this point. Never mind.

    Let's check in with some geniuses at MIT who thought it'd be a neat idea to spread 480 million short thin copper wire dipole antennas around in orbit for shortwave communications.

    http://www.n2yo.com/database/?q=WESTFORD#results

    Wikipedia says that as of 2016, 38 clumps of these needles are still in orbit after over fifty-five years. Fortunately for the subsequent satellite era, these antennas did not deploy fully.

    Now let's check in with RCA's SATCOM 3 which is still in orbit after thirty-eight years -- this satellite's failure led to a bit of shock, doubt, and uncertainty for satellite communications back in the early 1980s.

    http://www.n2yo.com/browse/?y=1979&m=12

    At least it has "age-appropriate company" in the form of all of the crap left over from the first Ariane 1 launch in the same month.

    Also, at least the early Russian crapsats have come down -- the same can't be said for the over-achieving Americans of the 1950s.

    http://www.n2yo.com/browse/?y=1958&m=03

    Finally, there's this little viewer that might crash your browser if you leave it running too long.

    http://www.n2yo.com/whats-up/whats-up-now.php

    Look up and wave hello to those friendly Russian "television" satellites.

    Are we starting to get this now? :-)

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  2. Hmmmm. Pretty interesting. I didn't create this world - I just want GPS. ;)

    If it makes you feel any better, these tiny sats aren't going to be as powerful as the ones NASA sends up. At least for now. They will be more specialized. And I'm not sure how this is any different than non human space debris. Everything that is in space - is pretty much still there. It's just a matter of time when you will get hit.

    Besides - it seems to me that they could make space drones that scoop these things up if the wanted to.

    And sure - the Ruskies being able to spy on us better isn't great - but we also get to see people call their neighbors assholes from space That is somewhat of a consolation prize. Isn't it?

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