Soccer Dad: (Post) orbital threat

February 7, 2007

(Post) orbital threat

Orbiting Junk, Once a Nuisance, Is Now a Threat the headline reads.

Well it's about the little bits of satellites and other sundries that are floating in orbit around the earth.

In the last decade or so, as scientists came to agree that the number of objects in orbit had surpassed a critical mass � or, in their terms, the critical spatial density, the point at which a chain reaction becomes inevitable � they grew more anxious.

Early this year, after a half-century of growth, the federal list of detectable objects (four inches wide or larger) reached 10,000, including dead satellites, spent rocket stages, a camera, a hand tool and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and destructive tests.

Still the headline seemed to hint at the sad story of Astronaut Lisa Nowak.

Here's her NASA biography. And here are two interviews she gave.

I thought that this Q & A from the 2006 interview was particularly poignant.

It�s been more than three years now since Columbia and its crew were lost. What was it like for you to learn that an accident had cost the lives of friends and colleagues?
It�s devastating for everybody, and when it�s friends, people that you know, it�s even harder. Three of those people were in my class, that I knew very well. So that�s hard. But I remember on that day, sitting there with my son, and we�re both watching together everything�s that�s happening, and he reached over and took my hand and said, �Mom, I still want you to go.� So, it�s a terrible tragedy to happen, but we know that there is a cause behind it and that we�re going to continue to follow that.

To read her biography it's impossible not to wonder what went wrong. She is a woman of incredible accomplishments. What made her throw all that away?

Blogdigger tags: Lisa Nowak, Space Junk.