The growing risk of losing satellites and what it could mean to humans

According to Heiner Kilindrad head of ESA (Euro Space Agency) since 1978 the amount of space junk has tripled. All this space junk comes from 50+ years of space exploration from all the countries on earth.  Something that increased space junk exponentially was the cold war; now the cold war was pretty much Russia and the US trying to one up each other in everything. So when Russia put a satellite in space of course we had to one up them and do something even better. Hmm well since being the first ones to put something in space was taken by the Russians why not put someone on the moon.

 But what happened to all those space craft’s leading up to the moon landing? Those space crafts were just left abandoned floating around earth with no thought as to what is going to happen to them. But the years went on and there was a race, a race that all countries competed in because now space was not the unconquerable unknown with the use of technology.

So countries started putting satellites and space stations in space some reasons for putting satellites in space were because of the growth of communications, weather forecast and TV. For space stations there have been experiments conducted mostly just biology, or human physical or mental test, just to see how humans react in space.(  here is a link if you want to know more http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html#.UnxbMPkgdg0 )

Now maybe it was our egos or that we thought we were finally done making huge mistakes but no one seemed to be asking the question. What is going to happen in the future when we do not need these outdated satellites. What’s going to happen to these pieces that were ejected from space ships or abandoned space ships. Well what happened was with no one watching these pieces over the years some have collided and/or exploded. I say explode because in the past when there was a multitude of missions into space by the US and other countries as well. When the missions were done they would leave the main ship jettison a smaller ship for the crew and head back to earth. But sometimes all the fuel was not used up and over the years it has ignited blowing up the space craft.

This has thrown dangerous piece all over the place and into the path of other pieces, and it just turns into a reacquiring event. But don’t worry money comes and saves the day, apparently NASA finally figured hmm since these pieces have the potential to destroy billions of dollars of important equipment. Why not track these objects so we don’t have to keep replacing satellites every three months. Now of course not all the debris in space is man-made there are some pieces that are from meteorites, but we have defiantly been the biggest abusers in creating space junk.

NASA constantly monitors about 20,000+ objects that are 4 inches or bigger, around 500,000 objects that are between 1-4 inches and over 100 million objects that are smaller than one inch.   (Again if you want to read more click the link and have fun http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html#.UnxbwPkgdg0) Of course its space so everything is moving at around 15,000 mph so every one of these useless objects can be a lethal projectile. If 100 + million objects moving at 15,000 mph is not enough to spell a huge problem. Most of the satellites are ran by solar energy which is good (nice clean energy) but that also means they have solar panels. So a metal object moving 15,000 mph verse some glass on a satellite, I think we all know who is going to win and it is not the satellite.

So let’s just say that for some reason all the satellites would stop working, well like I said with the list above we would lose those things. Now communications, first we would lose our cell phones we could not call anyone we would have to use a land line.  Also for any kind of aircraft they could not land safely because they cannot talk to the control tower.  Or if a military leader needs new orders they could not get them so they would be stuck sitting there in harm’s way. 

Now weather forecast this would be a deadly blow if we were to lose the ability to predict the weather. Why because major storms and or natural disasters would become impossible to track. For example I just thought of that tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 they had at least some warning.  What if they had no warning they just woke up one day and a tsunami is crashing into your home. Now this would not affect us because we do not live by a body of water big enough to create a tsunami. 

But we do live in the Midwest so that means tornadoes everywhere, and since we can’t predict where they will form a lot of people will be hurt. Now the list goes on and on with what would happen if we lost satellites but you get the general idea that it would suck to live without satellites. As the years go on the amount of space junk grows increasing the risk of taking out a satellite. Let's not ignore this problem because it's not going to go away it's just going to keep getting worse.