Monday, March 16, 2009

Space Junk

What's the deal with all the space junk? It would appear that space travel is not all that safe since debris the size of a tennis ball is enough to require the people in the space station to go into the escape capsule just in case it penetrates the space station itself. If I were an astronaut, I don't think that I would feel all that safe in the space station.

I wonder what the engineers are working on to combat this problem. It sounds like this space debris can also cause problems for the space shuttles. Are they designing a huge cosmic vacuum that can suck up this debris? How would they find all the debris out in the wide expanse of space? I guess they will just have to come up with tougher coverings for the space station and the vehicles used to send people into space.

No comments: