On Sep 20, 4:28*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 9/20/2011 11:56 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:

On 9/20/2011 8:38 AM, Jochem Huhmann wrote:

You'd need to fly something up to it, no doubt.

Besides, even *finding* it looks fairly impossible to me.

You could probably find it given enough time, money, and effort; but
what would be the point of doing that?
Want to recover something historic from space, go get Vanguard 2,
it's the oldest thing still up there, and we know where it is.
It's also small enough to be pretty easy to retrieve.

Correction, it's not the oldest thing still up there, that's Vanguard 1
- a tiny thing weighing only 3.2 pounds that would be very easy to grab
and return:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_1

I tend to use Vanguard 1 as a personal touchstone to my connection
to the Space Age, as it was launched four days before I was, but I
outweighed it, even at the time. :-)

Andre