Jettisoned space junk -- how big?

To put the fuss over the hazards of the golk ball
stunt in proportion, what are the largest cases of
jettison of materials from space stations -- Skylab,
Salyuts, mir, ISS, any of them -- to compare it to?

There was one Progress that separated without
adequate deorbit propellant, and what happened to the
Kvant-1 service module?

More specifically, I'm interested in EVA manual
jettsions -- trashbags, spacesuits, unneeded external
structureal elements and packing material, etc. How
big have they gotten to be?

Jim Oberg wrote:
To put the fuss over the hazards of the golk ball
stunt in proportion, what are the largest cases of
jettison of materials from space stations -- Skylab,
Salyuts, mir, ISS, any of them -- to compare it to?

Hazards? Golf ball? I think something that small would probably burn up,
JimO. (;^ ...unless you're thinking perhaps the guy doing the stunt
would be a really mediocre golfer and slice it really badly, smashing
out a section of solar array or an antenna or something.

That'd be about the only hazard I could think of: to the ISS itself, due
to a crewman not being exactly Al Shepard in the off-world golf department.


More specifically, I'm interested in EVA manual
jettsions -- trashbags, spacesuits, unneeded external
structureal elements and packing material, etc. How
big have they gotten to be?

What, you think that a lot of this stuff, jettisoned within a certain
time frame, might come together to form a "rubble pile" similar to the
asteroid recently studied by the Japanese probe? That _could_ be serious.

And, more importantly...is Ed White's spare glove somewhere in that pile?


--

..

"Though I could not caution all, I yet may warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools!"

--grateful dead.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
"Mikey'zine": dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

Jim Oberg wrote:
To put the fuss over the hazards of the golk ball
stunt in proportion, what are the largest cases of
jettison of materials from space stations -- Skylab,
Salyuts, mir, ISS, any of them -- to compare it to?

Hazards? Golf ball? I think something that small would probably burn up,
JimO. (;^ ...unless you're thinking perhaps the guy doing the stunt
would be a really mediocre golfer and slice it really badly, smashing
out a section of solar array or an antenna or something.

That'd be about the only hazard I could think of: to the ISS itself, due
to a crewman not being exactly Al Shepard in the off-world golf
department.

I think NASA was also worried about the golf ball being given an
acceleration that would allow it to come back and smack 'em in a future
orbit.

Jim Oberg wrote:
To put the fuss over the hazards of the golk ball
stunt in proportion, what are the largest cases of
jettison of materials from space stations -- Skylab,
Salyuts, mir, ISS, any of them -- to compare it to?

There was one Progress that separated without
adequate deorbit propellant, and what happened to the
Kvant-1 service module?

More specifically, I'm interested in EVA manual
jettsions -- trashbags, spacesuits, unneeded external
structureal elements and packing material, etc. How
big have they gotten to be?


The Saturn V second stage (S-II), that launched Skylab, also went into
orbit.
Can't get much bigger than that.

Rusty

Good point, but I do believe it has already reentered.

not to confuse it with Skylab itself...

Matthew Ota

Rusty wrote:
Jim Oberg wrote:
To put the fuss over the hazards of the golk ball
stunt in proportion, what are the largest cases of
jettison of materials from space stations -- Skylab,
Salyuts, mir, ISS, any of them -- to compare it to?

There was one Progress that separated without
adequate deorbit propellant, and what happened to the
Kvant-1 service module?

More specifically, I'm interested in EVA manual
jettsions -- trashbags, spacesuits, unneeded external
structureal elements and packing material, etc. How
big have they gotten to be?


The Saturn V second stage (S-II), that launched Skylab, also went into
orbit.
Can't get much bigger than that.

Rusty

Matthew Ota wrote:

Good point, but I do believe it has already reentered.

not to confuse it with Skylab itself...




Yes, it decayed fairly quickly due to its size and low mass.
The Skylab S-IVB boosters were intentionally decayed over the Pacific; I
assume hat this was also done to the S-II stage.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
...The Skylab S-IVB boosters were intentionally decayed over the Pacific; I
assume hat this was also done to the S-II stage.

No, the S-II was allowed to decay naturally.

They would have *liked* to deorbit it. They studied how to do it, and
concluded that the same technique used on the S-IVBs would work:
propellant dumping through the engines. But to do that on the S-II, you
had to add an attitude-control system, and make various other little
additions (e.g., bigger battery packs) to keep it "alive" long enough to
reach a good deorbit opportunity. The S-IVB already had all this stuff,
because of Apollo requirements for it to hold still long enough (with
plenty of margin for trouble) to extract a Lunar Module or whatever, but
the S-II didn't. None of it was terribly hard, but Skylab was on a
shoestring budget by this time, and they just couldn't quite afford it.

So the S-II got to take its chances. If memory serves, it came down in
a remote area of Africa.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Henry Spencer wrote:

But to do that on the S-II, you
had to add an attitude-control system, and make various other little
additions (e.g., bigger battery packs) to keep it "alive" long enough to
reach a good deorbit opportunity. The S-IVB already had all this stuff,
because of Apollo requirements for it to hold still long enough (with
plenty of margin for trouble) to extract a Lunar Module or whatever, but
the S-II didn't.



Did our S-IVBs used on the Saturn IB for Skylab have the attitude
control RCS packs?
I thought we discussed this once and they deleted them due to no need to
extract a LM from it.

Pat

In article . com,
Matthew Ota wrote:
The Saturn V second stage (S-II), that launched Skylab, also went into
orbit...

Good point, but I do believe it has already reentered.

Long ago -- it came down well before Skylab.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Jim Oberg wrote:
To put the fuss over the hazards of the golk ball
stunt in proportion, what are the largest cases of
jettison of materials from space stations -- Skylab,
Salyuts, mir, ISS, any of them -- to compare it to?

There was one Progress that separated without
adequate deorbit propellant, and what happened to the
Kvant-1 service module?

More specifically, I'm interested in EVA manual
jettsions -- trashbags, spacesuits, unneeded external
structureal elements and packing material, etc. How
big have they gotten to be?
In addition to suitsat on February 3, 2006, Exp 12 jettisoned the FPP
(Floating Potential Probe) on November 7, 2005
See http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=18597

Exp 10 Launched the TNS-0 Nanosatellite
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=15966?

Exp 9 launched the ~70kg "RRZh"
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=13865

I'm sure there's many more.