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Old 2006-04-20, 16:26   Link #91
Asphyxiate
Blob
 
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: In a place where only anonymii dare tread.
Age: 33
Well actually...

As the current estimate stands, there are over a million pieces of man made debris orbiting just earth, and that's just the amount detectable by radar and such. (More then a centimeter wide etc.) Consider a time in the future when you could construct a mine field in space...and I'm sure you can imagine the exponential increase in the amount of debris floating out there. It's only been 50 years and we've already started to turn earth's backyard into a garbage dump. The estimate does not count all the other pieces of junk dumped by various intergalactic probes, satellites, or landing crafts that have left earth's orbit for other places.

A pea-sized ball of space debris moving at orbital speed is equivalent of a 400-lb safe travelling at 60 miles per hour. Getting hit by a tennis ball sized piece of debris would be comparable to being blown up by 25 sticks of dynamite...I think that would be enough to trigger any mine.

Above examples obtained from the web, since all I could think up of was 'space debris can put holes through spacecraft walls' and that's not very impressive.

Also you need to take in account natural structures speeding around up there, there are millions upon millions of small and medium sized asteroids in just out galaxy that pinball around, it's just our atmosphere that renders of oblivious of these things.

Not to mention that the Milky Way is pretty stable compared to the conditions in other sections of the universe.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightbat®
Or do you guys think it's a coincedence that 100000 tonnes of spacegarbage just happens
to put a hole in your field?

"Gee wizz Joe, 20 just went off again, that makes 500 now, must be nothing huh?"
I'd think both would be very plausible actually.

Space isn't just a giant vast black landscape, think of it more as a very condensed electron cloud.

Edit: Sorry NSW! I edited my post lol, just in case someone believed that a 400-lb safe wouldn't trigger a mine I decided to add the dynamite part.

Last edited by Asphyxiate; 2006-04-20 at 16:56.
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