[IP] Wi Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Air

Sorry, by "stationary" I meant either "geostationary" or "at a
lagrange point".

And indeed, the space junk issue was what got me thinking of it. At
first I figured it would likely collect in a common ecliptic band
(presumably coplanar with that of our moon). And in fact that might
be what happens. The problem is the timescale.

The fascinating part of all this (for me) is social context. In the
(very late) 60s and 70s, when I was little, the cold war was in full
bloom and even earth day et al didn't (as I remember) have a huge
impact on space exploration. So this question of leaving trash in
orbit was just a "huh" question. Nowadays I realise the space junk
issue can be yet another example of poisoning the (extra-)global
environment in an irreversible way, so I wonder if you could attract
actual attention / reduction in the amount of crud through publicity.

Unfortunately, I suspect if you're going to fight a war anyway,
abrogating a treaty is the least of your worries. The only checks are
resources and self-interest.

-d

PS: Military operations are basically by definition environmentally
nasty: make the other guy's local environment so nasty that he
croaks. And since you're really worried about accomplishing that, you
expand the definition of "local" a bit in case he's moved around or
has a few buddies over.

But we often forget that military maintenance (practice, surveillance,
etc) are also environmentally bad news during peacetime too as the
military is immune the the various EPA/OSHA laws (I suspect OSHA would
not approve of a workplace that included people shooting at you). I
imagine there's a small bit of environmental consideration in military
decisions just to avoid poisoning your own people. But I doubt anyone
would seriously consider making that a meaningful issue in planning
any military operations.

On May 12, 2008, at 01:29 , David Farber wrote:

________________________________________

From: David Byrden [farber1@byrden.com]

Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 3:43 AM

From: DV Henkel-Wallace [gumby@henkel-wallace.org]

in the exploding-stationary case stuff exploding in directions

other than axially will shift around and take millennia to clear

up.

Er, there's no such thing as a stationary case. If you put something

stationary in space above Earth it will, not surprisingly, fall down.

You have to orbit things, extremely fast, to keep them up there. And

that is the problem.

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