[meteorite-list] Space junk - marine life - shame on NASA

From: Chris Peterson <clp_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 12:28:48 -0700
Message-ID: <999110FA189B4DFC9A7505C906F892F4_at_bellatrix>

There are significant costs involved in returning something like this. Not
only are the fuel costs real (making orbit changes uses more fuel if you
have more mass), but there is the time cost of transferring an object to the
cargo bay and securing it, and the corresponding cost of the lost time that
could be used for something mission related.

It's one thing to bring back a bag of garbage, and something else altogether
to return something the size of a satellite. (BTW, objects this size or
larger do decay and reenter every few days.)

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Catterton" <star_wars_collector at yahoo.com>
To: "Del Waterbury" <paseclipse at yahoo.com>
Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Space junk - marine life - shame on NASA


> why could they not have returned it to earth on a shuttle that was going
> to be returning to earth anyway?
> No extra cost involved there.
Received on Mon 03 Nov 2008 02:28:48 PM PST