Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (12 page)

Today, in addition to about 900 operational satellites, there are nearly 2,500 derelict ones up there. The oldest of them is the second satellite the United States ever launched,
Vanguard 1
, which has been orbiting Earth since March 17, 1958.

TOO MANY ODO’S IN THE LEO

The part of space that is most crowded with old junk is, not surprisingly, the part that’s easiest to get to and the most useful to us. More than half of all satellites—along with the International Space Station and any spacecraft that happen to be flying—circle the planet within a range of altitude called
Low Earth Orbit
(LEO), which stretches from about 124 to 1,240 miles up. (By comparison, the moon is more than 200,000 miles away.)

Eeew! International Space Station astronauts change their underwear only twice a week
.

The problem with filling this most useful of altitudes with junk is that the junk doesn’t just float around harmlessly up there; it’s actually moving incredibly fast—at an orbital speed of up to 17,000 miles per hour. At speeds like that, even the smallest debris particle can cause significant damage to whatever it hits; tiny flecks of paint and pieces of grit have been shown to pit the surface of expensive satellites. And a direct collision with anything larger than about a half-inch in diameter could actually destroy a satellite—or, for that matter, a manned spacecraft.

To counter these dangers, NASA and other space agencies try to catalog and track every piece of junk they can. The United States Space Surveillance Network monitors the location of more than 19,000 individual orbital debris objects (ODOs). But, unfortunately, the network can’t track anything smaller than about four inches across. NASA estimates there could be as many as 500,000 ODOs that are big enough to wreck a spacecraft but too small to track from Earth.

THE KESSLER SYNDROME

It wasn’t until the late 1970s that the space program looked at this problem head-on, after NASA scientist Donald Kessler and his colleagues warned that LEO could become so crowded that it would no longer be safe to launch new missions. If an item as small as an old bolt or screw could destroy a spacecraft, Kessler told them, imagine what an entire defunct satellite could do.

In February 2009, scientists had the opportunity to find out: A 2,000-pound decommissioned Russian satellite crashed into a still-operational 1,200-pound American model, obliterating both crafts and turning them into a dense cloud of dangerous debris. That event—the rendering of two large objects into thousands of smaller ones, each capable of going out on its own to destroy other spacecraft—is called the
Kessler syndrome
. Space junk multiplies at a constantly accelerating pace: More junk equals more collisions, and more collisions mean more junk. Even if humans never launch another rocket, the number of ODOs will still continue to multiply.

Not helping matters, in 2007 the Chinese government shot down an old communications satellite, presumably just to show they could do it. The test, which was deemed a success by the Chinese, added thousands of objects to the catalogue of ODOs. The following year, the United States also shot down one of its own satellites—supposedly because it was on a course to crash back to Earth with a full tank of toxic fuel. Now it’s 1,000 toxic bits and pieces.

In 2006 the record holder for longest stay surrounded by centipedes, Boonthawee Seangwong and the record holder for longest stay surrounded by scorpions, Kanjana Kaetkeow, got married
.

In 2009 the danger of space junk made big news when three crew members aboard the International Space Station had to evacuate into a waiting spacecraft because a five-inch chunk of an old rocket was heading straight for them. Thankfully, it missed. Afterward, NASA acknowledged that debris comes close enough to the station to cause concern several times per month, and the station has to take evasive action to avoid a collision about once a year.

FAR OUT

Unfortunately, the technology to clean up LEO doesn’t exist yet. But there is good news: The closer an object is to Earth, the less time it will last up there. The reason: The planet’s atmosphere, thin as it is at very high altitudes, exerts drag on objects in orbit, causing them to slow down. As they decelerate, they fall and typically burn up as they enter the thicker lower atmosphere.

Moving farther away from the planet, however, that atmospheric drag decreases exponentially—just a small change in altitude translates into a large difference in how long an object can expect to remain in orbit. A piece of space junk that would last only a few months at 150 miles up could last for years at 600 miles, decades at 800 miles, and centuries at 1,000 miles.

Because of this, most new satellites are designed to fire their rockets one last time when they come to the end of their operational lives. The blast moves them either low enough that they will crash back into the atmosphere, or up into a “graveyard orbit” of more than 22,000 miles—high enough that they are thought to be out of the way (for now).

MORE DIRT ON SPACE JUNK

Along with old satellites and booster rockets, there’s a lot of other random stuff hurtling through space. For example:

•
480 million copper needles:
Launched by the U.S. military in 1963, the needles, which were only the width of a hair, were meant to disperse around Earth and act as a sort of giant space antenna. It was hoped that this system would replace undersea cables for transatlantic communications, and it worked…for a while. Then the needles drifted a little too far apart and the radio signal gradually weakened, rendering the needles obsolete.

•
Nuclear reactors:
The United States put only one nuclear reactor in space, in 1965, but it’s still orbiting about 700 miles up. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, shot more than 30 nuclear-powered spy satellites into orbit between 1967 and 1988. Aside from a few accidents (including one that crashed into Canada in 1978), the reactor cores were shut down and boosted into a graveyard orbit at the end of their lives.

•
Tiny droplets of radioactive liquid:
When those Russian spy satellites shot their reactor cores into a graveyard orbit, there was often some coolant loss…leaving behind millions of globules of radioactive goo.

•
Stuff dropped by astronauts:
In 1965 Ed White became the first American to walk in space. Tethered to his Gemini space capsule, White lost his grip on a spare glove and could only watch as it floated away. Spacewalking astronauts have been dropping things ever since. Among the lost items: cameras, springs, screws, bolts, grease guns, pliers, and, oddly enough, a spatula.

•
Other astronaut “stuff”:
On manned spacecraft, urine and fecal matter is (to use a nautical term) “dumped over the side.” In September 2009, the Space Shuttle
Discovery
discharged 150 pounds of waste (about 10 days’ worth that had built up while the shuttle was docked with the International Space Station). Viewing conditions were just right—the liquid portion of the waste crystallized into a majestic plume that was visible from Earth.

“Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.”

—The
San Fran. Chronicle’s
TV listing for
The Wizard of Oz

The Dinner in the Sky company offers fine dining at a table suspended 150 feet in the air
.

BAD LIARS

This article was originally attributed to William Faulkner but turned out to be the work of a BRI office drone, Fern Gurgleman. Nevertheless, enjoy these other stories of blatant fakery
.

W
ARHOL’S BALDWIN PERIOD
In February 2008, a fine-art collector bought six Andy Warhol paintings from a pair of art dealers at a bargain price of $100,000. But after the sale, the collector started wondering about the low price, so he took one of the pieces to an appraiser. Almost instantly, the appraiser could tell it was a fake because of two clues: First, it was signed “Andy Warhol, 1996”—nine years after Warhol’s death. And second, the painting was not, as the sellers had claimed, a portrait of Matthew Baldwin, of the famous Baldwin acting family. How did he know? Because there is no Matthew Baldwin of the famous Baldwin acting family.

IT’S A HORSE (OF COURSE)

Shenyang Botanical Park, a small zoo in China, scored a major coup in 2007 when it acquired a zebra. They proudly showed it off and charged visitors the equivalent of 60 cents to have their picture taken with the exotic African animal. One problem: It was obvious to almost anyone that it was a white horse with black stripes sloppily painted on it. When pressed by a reporter, a zoo official said, “It’s from Africa. What do you call it if it’s not a zebra?” The “zebra” is still available for pictures and rides.

FOXY FOOTAGE

In 2009 Fox News host Sean Hannity showed video from a November anti-healthcare reform rally in Washington, D.C. that had “20,000 to 45,000 protestors.” The next night, Jon Stewart observed on Comedy Central’s
The Daily Show
that in the video, the colorful fall leaves switched to summer green: “Did they just put two different rallies together?” Stewart was right; Fox added footage from a much larger summer protest to make it appear that more than a few thousand people showed up to the fall protest. “It pains me to say this,” said Hannity, “but Stewart was right.”

A Japanese company offers a “Dial-A-Flattery” service for people who need a compliment
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TWIN TOWN

IItt’’ss aa mmeeddiiccaall mmyysstteerryy
..

P
AIR-ADISE

For parents expecting a baby, finding out that they’re having twins can be both a joy and a financial burden. And no one knows that feeling better than the residents of a village called Kodinji in Northern India, also known as “Twin Village.” The town is home to nearly 250 sets of twins…out of only 2,000 families, giving it, by far, the highest ratio of twin births in the world—six times the global average. But why? A local group called TAKA (Twins and Kins Association) is trying to figure out what’s going on.

WHAT’S GOING ON?

No one knows for sure why Kodinji has become the twin capital of the world. “It’s an amazing phenomenon. The people are not exposed to any kinds of harmful drugs or chemicals,” said Dr. Krishnan Sribiju, who’s working with TAKA to study the village. The locals don’t eat a special diet, either. And genetic causes seem unlikely, since people who grew up elsewhere and move there as adults are also more likely to have twins. But many women raised in Kodinji who then moved to other places have continued to have multiple births.