Satellites : general discussion and musings

[pov603]

Hey, this is serious stuff!

If you had a planet the size of earth which was completely paved and let loose 17,000 [?] small and large motorized vehicles, to go around and around in parrallel lines with an odd few going off in different directions, there would be mayhem and pile-ups galore...wouldn't there?

In all seriousness, I can only imagine that most, if not all of the objects would ever 'see' each other again and for NASA to make out there is a catastrophe waiting to happen is ludicrous.

There may be collisions, but only caused from the objects that shouldn't be there ie 'tool kits/bags [?]' or other such items which are not on a pre-planned/programmed orbit.

Out of what is up there [17,000?] has NASA said how many are not in planned orbit?

[reel.deal]

Out of what is up there [17,000?] ,,,has NASA said how many are not in planned orbit?

Rubbish Atmosphere: Space Debris In Orbit

The European Space Agency has just released these images showing every piece of debris circling the Earth.
Scientists say there are now 12,000 bits of trash in orbit - and only 700 of them are satellites.
Everything from fragmentary remains of exploded craft to tools dropped during spacewalks is out there.Picture courtesy of ESA
At closing speeds reaching 50,000kmph, even the smallest bits of space debris can cause serious harm to spacecraft; larger ones can cause catastrophe. Picture courtesy of ESA 3:19pm UK, Tuesday April 15, 2008
http://news.sky.com/home/media-gallery/1312949


so... that equates to 5,000 more chunks of 'debris' since 'Tuesday April 15, 2008'...
"and only 700 of them (were) satellites..."

[Unleashed]

700 Satellites! What??
I suppose as long as you are making it up as you go along, you can say whatever you like.
I have noticed many stories are disappearing that told of the 17,000 satellites in orbit, and/or have been changed to say they were TRAVELLING at 17,000 mph.

This story, I mean report, says there are almost 7,000 satellites. 6,578 to be exact listed in their tracking catalog. And the rest have been relegated to being man-made objects of 17,000 give or take.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite

And here, Pov603, you have the story about the two satellites crashing (which they knew was going to happen sooner or later), in which they have no idea how much debris it made or how big the pieces or where they went. So that 17,000 is just a round number give or take a giblet.

But amazingly, such an occurence did not lead to any reported damage to any other satellites.
Though you might think that each piece of debris would keep travelling outward until it hit "something", that stopped it's trajectory.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,491225,00.html

Along with such brilliant ideas like umbrellas, and magnetic dragnets, we have "housekeeping spacecraft", which not unlike Rosie the Maid, which might whip out robotic arms with a dustpan and sweep up those pesky debris!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14405118

Warning: This article shows a picture of the most dangerous type of space debris, a Jaws of the atmosphere, if you will, the spent rocket bodies circling above us.

[nonhocapito]

As always in this discussion there is a negligent overlooking of the actual vastness of space were these things take place.

It matters little if the pictures we find on the internet show a planet surrounded by a scary amount of junk. They're just pictures.

7,000 or 17,000 or 170,000 pieces is nothing. Suppose you have 17,000 pieces of junk scattered in the ocean, and you don't want to get in touch with them. Would you stop bathing? What the chances would be for you to make an encounter with one of these pieces? Now consider that the space were satellites supposedly move is much much larger and deeper than all the oceans on earth.

I am open to the idea that space is an unwelcoming environment for a lot of the bullshit activity we are showed by the media. But none of this space junk argument supports in my opinion the idea that satellites are an impossibility.

[Jonathan]

As always in this discussion there is a negligent overlooking of the actual vastness of space were these things take place.

It matters little if the pictures we find on the internet show a planet surrounded by a scary amount of junk. They're just pictures.

7,000 or 17,000 or 170,000 pieces is nothing. ...

Thanks, you spoke from my heart.
Add to that that most satellites are orbiting the same general direction as far as I know - they are shoot up utilizing the earths rotational speed to save fuel.
Same must apply to the junk as well.
That in turn makes the speed of the junk less dangerous because the relative speed between satellites and junk is not nearly as fast as it appears.

[Unleashed]

You guys are awfully sanguine about it.

All I can say is what goes up, must come down! Somewhere...

[Jonathan]

You guys are awfully sanguine about it.
...

I had to look up the definition, it goes from cheerfully optimistic to hopeful to "or confident" which seems rather open to interpretation.
For me it is definitely the last of the three.

I mentioned earlier: if we (I should rather say "I") can still rely on what we know and can verify each day personally about basic physics and on propositions such as "next to no air in space at these heights" than for me it follows that, yes, what goes up must come down.
But it will take a very very long time.

What would make you think satellites would drop rather fast instead - and therefore be not really possible (which you seem to think from what I gather - sorry if I got the wrong impression)?
For another angle: what if not satellites would these shiny dots moving about the night sky be - exactly predicted and predictable, which of course would be natural if they where put there by people who know where and how they where put, where they go and how high and fast (which is related) they are?
Here is another program telling where and when to look.

Because I have come to doubt many things we are fed as real I could say that I don't know - which would lead me nowhere.
So far I found no reason to doubt their existence.
Occams razor says to me: its satellites.

Cheers!

[Unleashed]

Hey Jonathan!

At least you didn't come back with a quote by the oft-mentioned Bill Hicks. "...well, looks like we got ourselves a reader!". HA!
I didn't elaborate on my log-in handle, but, "Unleashed" is tongue firmly tucked in cheek. I know a little bit about a lot of things, just enough to be dangerous.

My Occam's Razor answer was air freight flight paths. They are, as you can imagine, well away from normal passenger routes. But, regular as clockwork.

Do these objects you see in the sky seem to range at 32,000 ft., or 32,000 miles?

Btw, I have an XM Radio. The receiver points upward one inch above my porch railing.

[Jonathan]

Hey Jonathan!

At least you didn't come back with a quote by the oft-mentioned Bill Hicks. "...well, looks like we got ourselves a reader!". HA!
I didn't elaborate on my log-in handle, but, "Unleashed" is tongue firmly tucked in cheek. I know a little bit about a lot of things, just enough to be dangerous.

My Occam's Razor answer was air freight flight paths. They are, as you can imagine, well away from normal passenger routes. But, regular as clockwork.

Do these objects you see in the sky seem to range at 32,000 ft., or 32,000 miles?

Btw, I have an XM Radio. The receiver points upward one inch above my porch railing.

Just before I read your post I found out that "sanguine" has yet other meanings - and you confirmed
I don't care whether I'm read or have a reader - but I got interested in the reasoning behind the angle of view on things which seem so different from mine.

The "air freight flight paths" do not ring any bell with me.
It's your answer, not mine.
To me, it would still be planes - which are seen because of their positioning and - if on approach - landing lights.
Which look and behave different from what is referred to as satellites - to me, that is.
I live near an airport and see planes all the time - and satellites too

The XM Radio you mentioned: I did not know such thing existed - there really is a market for "pay per listen" just like pay per view or a (satellite) TV subscription? Appearantly
I just looked up how it works - a couple of satellites in geosync orbit - each of them not having a fixed position but any one of them always at about the same inclination.
Geosync is much more near to earth and would not be as difficult to receive as TV from geostationary orbit - not requiring a perfectly pointed dish.
But: I don't know what the antenna looks like and whether it is highly directional.

32,000 ft., or 32,000 miles?
A plane - air freight or passenger - at 32.000 ft (about 10 km) viewable as that fast, steady and appearing and disappearing as suddenly as observable ... is not credible to me.
A satellite: we see the sunlight reflected.
It often appears suddenly very high up and is only visible a few seconds on its path.
Consistent with: what we see is a reflection of sunlight - if the angle does not match anymore it just disappears to us.

...to me, that is.

[Unleashed]

I've seen the sunlight glint off airliners, too.

I'm more interested in your super human eyesight, though.
Say the world was flat and nothing impeded your vision, no curvature. Do you think you could behold a school bus in New York City from Capetown, South Africa, with the sunshine glancing off the bumper? That, by the way, is nowhere close to being 32,000 miles apart.

Oh, about the XM. Yes, it is purported via a 64,000 mile round trip radio signal.
But, of course, in my theory, I am merely rented the "box", that allows me to distinguish a range of 250 channels digitally moderated vs. the analog. The secret is what's in the box, not what's in the air.

[nonhocapito]

I've seen the sunlight glint off airliners, too.

I'm more interested in your super human eyesight, though.
Say the world was flat and nothing impeded your vision, no curvature. Do you think you could behold a school bus in New York City from Capetown, South Africa, with the sunshine glancing off the bumper? That, by the way, is nowhere close to being 32,000 miles apart.

We already had this discussion once or twice on this forum, Unleashed. I don't remember if you took part in it, but I remember the same objections (I think it was in the hubble thread... infact here's a post of mine on the same subject: viewtopic.php?p=2354851#p2354851).

Everyone can see satellites going about at night. They are NOT airplanes. Their light is steady as that of a planet, and they move across the sky quite rapidly. Please go out at night and look for them, you are bound to see one in a matter of minutes, and many more after that.

The light they emit is the one of the sun being reflected (hence the apparent steadiness of it). So, to have at night the sun light being reflected, it goes without saying that they are so far up to be well above our horizon, at an altitude where the sun light bounces off of them. Since this happen in the dead of the night as well, it means way far up.
If the next argument is once again going to be that if those are satellites, then we see too few of them, just think of the many that must go about at night, that at a given angle that do not reflect sunlight. etc etc.

OK, all the above could be wrong, it is just what I assumed was true so far. You didn't make me change my mind, though.

Even though a lot is probably covered up about what satellites are up there for, there are answers provided to many scientific and technical questions we can't figure. It would be better to take the science vulgate and see what blatant contradictions can be found there. Just as a general guideline or starting point, consider pages like this: http://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite7.htm

[Jonathan]

I've seen the sunlight glint off airliners, too.

Me too - but only very short, like a flash.

Way after midnight too - when the sun would be far beyond the horizon?
Too far beyond to illuminate an airplane at 32.000 ft and reflect back to an observer - it is past sunset for them, too.

Not too far beyond to reflect off of a much higher object.

Also a reason for appearing and disappearing suddenly instead of being visible from horizon to horizon.

I'm more interested in your super human eyesight, though.
Say the world was flat and nothing impeded your vision, no curvature. Do you think you could behold a school bus in New York City from Capetown, South Africa, with the sunshine glancing off the bumper? That, by the way, is nowhere close to being 32,000 miles apart.

If it was flat - and If the air would allow to see through such a distance unimpeded?
Probably not.
Super human eyesight would be needed indeed.
The area (the very small shiny bumper) would be too small to be visible I guess.

Light reflected from a much larger flat surface than a bumper (solar panels for instance) and travelling through only the with hight ever thinner air straight line up [edit: ...down, I meant really...]?
I have no problem with that.

Cheers!

[edit:] the post I answered changed slightly after my answer to the original...

[Jonathan]

The secret is what's in the box, not what's in the air.

I'd really like you to elaborate on that because I'm curious.

(I'll be away for a couple of days starting tomorrow, probably...)

[edit]: "probably" did'nt work out - so: I'm here, reading...
and I'm not just curious - I literally don't have a clue what you refer to with that - but would like to

[SmokingGunII]

The shit continues.......they have "twins" in space now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14825641

[Jonathan]

Not having read all of that article:

This will help explain many mysteries, such as why the farside of the Moon looks so different from that of the nearside with its great swathe of dark volcanic plains, or maria.

I thought:
Maybe it looks different because some early guys depicted it that way and called it photographs?
And now they have a mystery to solve?

OTOH: this side of the moon NEVER faces the earth, ever.
Which is a nice, but observable by everyone, coincidence.
(though I firmly believe, FWIW, that there are no coincidences...)

Who knows why it may look like it appearantly does?