Space Trash

Last Friday I heard two really great lectures by Sally Ride and Richard Garriott (who opened) through the Environmental Sciences Institute at UT.  I was initially apprehensive about Richard Garriott’s presentation because I am not sure that I am keen on opening space travel up to anything other than research-based exploration. My biggest concern has always been Space Trash. Our environmental track record on our own planet doesn’t reflect well on how we will treat space. I ended up really liking Richard Garriott’s lecture–it was informative, and fun and he talked about global warming, as did Sally Ride in her lecture (I’ll blog more about this later)–and he did mention space trash in his lecture. He said that some of what we see as shooting stars in our atmosphere, is actually Space Trash– I had no idea at the time that I was making a wish on a bit of discarded space equipment and I’m still wondering if it’ll affect the wish’s effectiveness. Wired wrote an article called “Lost in Space: 8 Weird Pieces of Space Junk” a few months back in which they talk about some of the things that have been lost (or left) to space–including Gene Roddenberry’s (Creator of Star Trek series) ashes, astronaut tools & equipment, abandoned satellites, and apparently pee at one point. The pee, upon being released into space, freezes and turns into pee crystals which apparently is very beautiful to witness. A heartening thing to hear is that the pee is now recycled into drinkable water. Okay, that did sound a little funny. But it is nice to know that the problem of waste is being addressed, if even on a small scale. Also, in this article in a NASA kid’s page, called StarChild, there is mention of a future, collaborative effort to stop space trash & to clean up the trash that is already there. Until then, space explorers will have to track their trash to avoid collisions, and we’ll continue to wish on shooting bits of Gene Roddenberry.