back to article Supply ships used to push ISS clear of sat-smash debris

The International Space Station was given a shove by supply ships docked to it over the weekend in order to evade a cloud of high-velocity orbital shrapnel created when a Russian military satellite crashed into an Iridium comsat in 2009. Aviation Week reports that astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the station fired three …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Duplicate

    "At the moment most countries rely on the US military Space Surveillance Network to monitor the situation, but the ESA has aspirations towards a system of its own in future."

    Yes, why use someone else's system when we could spend billions of Euros on one of our own?

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Go

      2 eyes are better than 1...

      See title...

    2. TeeCee Gold badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Duplicate

      c.f. Galileo.......

      Or, in other words, an eminently sensible criticism which will be completely ignored. Apparently the diplomatic willy-waving opportunities presented by having your own ${superpower_status_symbol} trumps any budgetary considerations.

      Like they give a toss. It's not their money they're peeing up the wall anyway, it's ours.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @TeeCee

        Galileo != GPS

        Yeah they'll do the same job for your average glib comment tossing prat in the street but Galileo is designed such that it can be relied upon. Life is far to short to try explaining that concept to you. So yeah you're right, Galileo will do absolutely nothing to stop you driving your 4x4 up a railway line when your £49.99 sat nav tells you to so therefore it must be a complete waste.

    3. BristolBachelor Gold badge
      FAIL

      Why Duplicate?

      So if the US military system is so great, why was it that no-one stopped the Iridium satellite from crashing into a piece of space rubbish? Because that wasn't their job. Their job was to look for intercontinental balistic missiles with nuclear warheads flying towards America.

      So therefore a system that is designed just to prevent this type of thing happening, and is not affraid to publish the data of everything up there so that people can work out and avoid possible collisions is a good idea.

      Redundancy is another reason. Why does your car have 2 breaking circuits? What a waste! We should get rid of one of them for you. Similarly when you fly on a plane, we should remove all the redundancy there too; it's so wasteful having 2 things that might do the same job...

    4. Tom 13

      Fine by me, but then I'm a US citizen.

      The question for you is:

      Do you really want to always be dependent on whatever wanker may be sitting in the Big House?

      They can cut off your connection to that all important link in a New York second. Me, I'd want a back up under the control of my own government. Frankly I'd prefer one under my specific control, but I don't have that much money, so I settle for the next best option.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    what they need is

    a vacuum cleaner.

    BOOM BOOM.

    mines the orange furry one .

    1. Yag
      Pint

      Need a space vacuum cleaner?

      Spaceball-1 on the way at LUDICROUS SPEED!

      - Beer because there's no punch icon, and I really should cut on punch on friday's noon break.

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