We’re Burying Spacecraft In The Ocean? Seriously?
Come on, I refuse to believe we can’t do better than that!
Have you ever heard of Point Nemo?
I actually came across the term in a documentary I watched over a year ago.
It’s a location in the southern Pacific Ocean and it’s the point on our planet that is farthest away from any sort of land.
Named after Captain Nemo, a fictional submarine commander created by Jules Verne for Twenty Thousand Leages Under The Sea, Nemo means “no one” in Latin.
What the documentary didn’t mention was that since 1971, Point Nemo is continuously used as a dumpsite for space junk!
We’re talking about close to 300 satellites, shuttles, rockets. Even entire space stations have been plunged into this watery graveyard.
Why do we need a space junkyard at all?
In theory, when a spacecraft is being decommissioned, it will continue to orbit Earth for decades, if not centuries.
But if their trajectory is not corrected once in a while, it’s going to nosedive back onto Earth eventually.
With regard to small objects, that’s no issue as they simply burn off when reentering Earth’s atmosphere. (Although I wonder whether that really doesn’t affect our atmosphere at all, given the amount of objects that are circling Earth and their number increases almost every day.)
But the large objects have to be taken out of orbit to reduce the risk of collision with other spacecraft as well as an uncontrolled crash on Earth’s surface that could harm, if not kill, a lot of people. (Think blockbuster scenario: retired ISS crashing into a major city of your choice.)
Is it really necessary to make the ocean a dumpsite?
Speaking of the ISS: The station has been leaking air for years and NASA has already announced plans to put it on top of the current pile of space junk at Point Nemo after 2030.
Now, I’m not a scientist or engineer but just my common sense makes me ask the question above.
I fully understand the need to take spacecraft out of orbit, but bury it in the ocean?
I can only imagine that the ISS might develop even more leaks once it’s down there, that metal parts may start rotting in some form, valves and other mechanical as well as electronical systems will deteriorate and become porous.
This can’t be it!
I’m just asking: The individual modules were brought into space seperately and assembled in orbit. So why can’t they be separated again and brought down the same way they were brought up there?
For example, I know for a fact that some modules have their own thrusters and one ISS module is inflatable. That makes me believe that the thrusters can be used to fly the modules back down and the inflatable module can be packed up and stowed in some form.
Once back on Earth, each part could be disassembled completely, maybe studied for improvement of further spacecraft and then be recycled or reused in another way (training purposes, museums).
Plus, for how long shall this dumping continue? Until the more than 3 kilometers from the ocean bed to the surface are filled up and a trash island starts to form?
And even if adding to all the waste our oceans have to deal with already seemed like a viable solution in 1971, someone must have started thinking about other solutions since then!
I can’t believe it’s only me — a layperson without a degree!
Let’s predict the future for space junk and Point Nemo! What are your ideas?
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