Jettisoned space junk -- how big?

"Chuck Stewart" wrote
But the main point, which thousands of forum and
blog pundits seem to have missed and keep on
missing with a vengeance, is that it's perfectly
*feasible* for the ball to return at some later
date and impact ISS with a relative velocity
orders of magnitude greater than the one the
cosmonaut imparted to it.

I've heard this said,
but I haven't seen
any proof of it.

"Chuck Stewart" wrote in message
news
But the main point, which thousands of forum and
blog pundits seem to have missed and keep on
missing with a vengeance, is that it's perfectly
*feasible* for the ball to return at some later
date and impact ISS with a relative velocity
orders of magnitude greater than the one the
cosmonaut imparted to it.

From what I remember from my orbital mechanics classes, I don't see how this
could happen, especially since ISS's orbit is pretty much circular.

Jeff

--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

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

Pat Flannery wrote:


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.


Though now that I think of it, it needs some form of roll control at the
very least due to the use of the single J-2.

Pat

remember ISS orbuit is constantly changing from reboosts.

Hitting a ball as a stunt that MAY come back and damage ISS or
something else in orbit is at best questionable and perhaps completely
unsafe.

as such it shouldnt happen at all...............

In article ,
Pat Flannery 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"...

Did our S-IVBs used on the Saturn IB for Skylab have the attitude
control RCS packs?

Yes -- for roll control, stabilization during separation, and deorbit
attitude control.

I thought we discussed this once and they deleted them due to no need to
extract a LM from it.

I suspect you're mixing this issue up with the discussion of the SLA
panels. They were retained, rather than jettisoned, on the Skylab
launches because there was no payload that they might obstruct, and there
was a desire to minimize debris. (On ASTP, the presence of the Docking
Module trumped the debris issue, and they were again jettisoned.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:48:50 +0000, Jim Oberg wrote:

"Chuck Stewart"
.... is that it's perfectly *feasible* for
the ball to return at some later date and
impact ISS with a relative velocity orders
of magnitude greater than the one the
cosmonaut imparted to it.

I've heard this said,
but I haven't seen
any proof of it.

Hmmm... presumably
you and Jeff have
access to the same
resources I use
so that won't
help... Let me
send a couple
of emails...

Two requests
for cites
cannot be
ignored

--
Chuck Stewart
"Anime-style catgirls: Threat? Menace? Or just studying algebra?"

Jeff Findley wrote:
"Chuck Stewart" wrote in message
news
But the main point, which thousands of forum and
blog pundits seem to have missed and keep on
missing with a vengeance, is that it's perfectly
*feasible* for the ball to return at some later
date and impact ISS with a relative velocity
orders of magnitude greater than the one the
cosmonaut imparted to it.


From what I remember from my orbital mechanics classes, I don't see how this
could happen, especially since ISS's orbit is pretty much circular.

It could happen, over a long period of time, by differential nodal
regression, since the orbits would have slightly different average
altitudes.

Jim Oberg wrote:

I've heard this said,
but I haven't seen
any proof of it.
I'd like to see the proposed mechanism as well. Unless I've messed
something up, the ballistic number of the golf ball is so much lower
than that of ISS it really isn't going to be in the same neighborhood
for very long. The current relatively high eccentricity of the ISS
(13km) orbit extends the window a bit I guess...

hop wrote:
Jim Oberg wrote:

I've heard this said,
but I haven't seen
any proof of it.

I'd like to see the proposed mechanism as well. Unless I've messed
something up, the ballistic number of the golf ball is so much lower
than that of ISS it really isn't going to be in the same neighborhood
for very long. The current relatively high eccentricity of the ISS
(13km) orbit extends the window a bit I guess...

That's a good point. It wouldn't have time enough to get much different.