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?

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

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.

Jim Oberg writes:

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?

Isn't the main figure of merit not size, but density (or rather, the
ratio of frontal area to mass)?

And the smallish ones (too small to track by radar) will tend to be
more dangerous ...

(I'm assuming Jim knows this, so I'm not sure what he's fishing for).

Chris Bennetts wrote:
Didn't they throw away one of HST's solar arrays on the first servicing
mission?

Indeed, they did. It was the most beautiful video I've ever seen.
Even the astronauts were awestruck as the panel was hit by the
shuttle's exhaust plume and started flapping. They just stood there
and watched for five minutes as it fell astern, then (thanks to orbital
mechanics) pulled ahead of them.

I watched the whole thing live on CNN in the early hours of the morning
(they had nothing better to broadcast). Wish I'd taped it. Every year
I do another search for STS-61, but I've never managed to find more
than a 20 second clip of the event.

They jettisoned trash from the Salyuts regularly, and joked about the
NORAD cataloging the bags. Or was it someone else cataloging them ?

Some of the amateur radio satellites were dumped out the same lock.

Regards

Carsten Nielsen
Denmark

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.

wrote:

Chris Bennetts wrote:


Didn't they throw away one of HST's solar arrays on the first servicing
mission?



Indeed, they did. It was the most beautiful video I've ever seen.
Even the astronauts were awestruck as the panel was hit by the
shuttle's exhaust plume and started flapping.



Yeah, it was really something to see the RCS plume make it flex despite
its great distance. You don't want to get in front of a thruster while
you are EVAing.
Remember how concerned they were that someone would contact it in such a
way as to get electrified by it as they got ready to release it?

Pat

Jim Kingdon wrote:

And the smallish ones (too small to track by radar) will tend to be
more dangerous ...

At ISS altitude, small things tend to decay quite quickly relative to
the station, even if they are dense. Intuition might make you think
that the ISS (being essentially aluminum cans and big "wings") wold
have a lower ballistic number than say, a steel bolt, but the
cube/square relation of mass to surface area means that it is usually
the other way around.

Also, the potential re-contact velocity of anything thrown off of ISS
is roughly the same as the velocity it was thrown at. They still have
the potential to cause damage, but not nearly as much as something on a
different orbit that happens to cross the ISS path.