Spiraling Out of Control
by D.K. Spencer
Sorry I've been absent. If I hurry up ... I'll be late.
I haven't stayed in touch and for that I'm very sorry. Things have been going on in the world and I haven't had a chance to make sense of any of it. I think you know what I mean.
I was going to write in February about how rocket stages and space stations tend to randomly and uncontrollably fall in chaotic and ungentlemanly-like fashion upon the earth, and have been doing so since Sky Lab. (for you youngsters - Sky Lab was an 85 ton space station that crashed horribly in Australia and the Indian Ocean MID 1979 killing no one, but causing the Australian town Esperance to charge NASA $400 dollars for littering.)
Since Then
After failure to achieve orbit, Soviet spy satellite Cosmos 954's nuclear reactor core came crashing back to Earth, spreading radioactive debris over Northwestern Canada in 1978. The Soviet Cosmos 1402 nuclear propelled satellite then plummeted to earth in 1983.
NASA's 11.6 ton Pegasus 2 satellite crashed in the Atlantic LATE 1979. The 52 foot, 22 ton Soviet Salyut 7 space station, coupled with another 22 ton spaceship, Cosmos 1686, crashed over Argentina in 1991.
Then Russia's Mir space station de-orbited and crashed in 2001. NASA's 35 foot long, 6.5 ton UARS satellite fell to Earth in September 2011. The European Space Agency's one ton, 17 foot satellite GOCE plummeted on Nov. 10, 2013. The bus-sized, Chinese space station Tiangong-1 crashed into the South Pacific in 2016.
2019, China's 9.5 ton Tiangong 2 (because one just isn't enough) fell to Earth in supposed controlled fashion.
It's like a continual rain of uncontrolled, man-made space junk falling down on our heads every year or so. What are we doing?
The Moon
It was first reported that a Falcon 8 rocket motor would crash into the moon earlier this month that would pin the blame on Elon Musk. But several days later, a correction was made that put the blame on China (China has flat out denied this). The crash on the dark side of the moon, by now, has caused a 62 foot wide crater in the moon's already pocked face.
There was some speculation that earth viruses or DNA might contaminate the moon's surface, hampering future study of the pristine environment. But that worry was a little late, when in 2019, Israel inadvertently crashed their lander on the moon, possibly spilling its containment of water bears across the surface. And the moon might just be the perfect environment for water bears to survive.
The Sky
Remember Starlink? Starlink lost forty broadband satellites due to a ‘minor’ geomagnetic storm in February and have apparently burned up in the earth's atmosphere, although this is contrary to what actually happened over Spain, January 24th, 2022, where a Starlink satellite was seen crashing into the Cantabrian sea. (look up the Kessler syndrome) So apparently some fragments do crash to the earth?
What size and how many? I have questions.
It's like we humans are having a drunken summer pool party where we discard all our empty bottles, used needles, detritus, flotsam, and jetsam around the pool. Our garbage is strewn about, thrown under perfectly manicured shrubs, we throw our junk out for the janitors and maids to clean. Except there are no janitors or maids in space. (Yet) What are we thinking? Where are we going?
I mean there's a Tesla orbiting around our sun for God's sake. Think about this!
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