Technology has altered the way that humans see the world. There was a time when perceptions like that of the Aborigines portrayed in “The Gods must be crazy.” Fortunately, we have the technology not only to create space junk, and to track it. Now if we could only invent a giant vacuum cleaner to suck it up and get rid of it. Unfortunately, we cannot hire Spaceballs "Mega Maid" from Spaceballs. (See the video below.) We have no solution for the space junk. We track it, we can even calculate the likely area of reentry and even the impact point. That is much solace to people looking up at the sky saying is that coming for me?
There is so much space junk and debris that several international agencies have been created just to deal with it. The European Space Agency announced on January 15, 2018 that it was taking applications for its “Space Debris” training course. (Click here to read their page.) Make no mistake, this is not laughing matter. The SatView.org website does a fantastic job tracking, charting, and predicting reentry vectors. Even if you are not interested in following this issue, you should check out the page (Click here) to see the list of recent and next reentries.
Thanks to cameras being ubiquitous in nearly every corner of the world, we see an unprecedented number of still photos and videos of “objects” making fiery passes through our atmosphere as they soar toward the earth. The visuals are stunning. The threat is intense.
Add to the mix Asteroids and Meteors and the whole thing makes you cringe. Checkout this image depicting the asteroids within our solar system. The red and yellow are objects that pose a risk for a near pass or direct hit to the earth. The picture only covers asteroids. (Click here for more.)
Hopefully, the USA and others around the world will work together to construct some kind of system that will successfully mitigate this problem.
Spaceballs “Mega Maid”
If you want to see one of the worst movies ever made, “The Gods must be crazy”, I have imbedded it at the bottom.
