Wednesday, April 19, 2017

We aren't doing anything about space junk



And the problem is getting worse. A lot worse.

Even though some ideas for missions have been floated, and the Japanese tried one that didn't work (https://phys.org/news/2017-02-japan-space-junk-mission.html), there still isn't anything being done. And the problem is getting worse, according to this article, actually doubling over the past 25 years.

It's unfortunately going to take the loss of a couple of major expensive pieces of operational space hardware to motivate the countries of the world to do something, though at this stage, it isn't clear what that something would be. This is where science and engineering become very important.




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