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How safe is the Belt?
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August 21st 03, 07:56 PM
Earl Colby Pottinger
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How safe is the Belt?
(Christopher) :
And the habitat isnt going to get hit? Asteroids come in all
shapes and sizes, and a rock the size of your fist or as big as
a house brick doing 30 miles a second is going to pack quite a
punch, plus they some times travel in groups, some as big a
bricks some as big as cars.
When it comes to space science 'Star Wars' is not your friend.
While it looked good on the screen, in real life the belt is full of nothing,
with distances between objects usually in the hundreds and thousands of
kilometers.
Also where did the 30 miles per second come from? At that speed anything in
the belt is at escape velocity and is long gone. Did you forget every object
are in the same orbits? Usually speeds between random objects that are in
the belt is measured in meters or tens of meters per second. Greater speeds
are only seen by objects that are not part of the belt and are just pasting
thru, thus being rare. Or objects moved out of one of the other orbital
bands of the belts.
It is important to remember, if it is small it can't do much damage. If it
is big you can see it coming.
Earl Colby Pottinger
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Earl Colby Pottinger