{"id":529,"date":"2013-04-26T00:21:37","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T00:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/?p=529"},"modified":"2013-04-26T01:54:46","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T01:54:46","slug":"we-have-another-consensus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/?p=529","title":{"rendered":"We have another consensus"},"content":{"rendered":"

“There is a wide and strong expert consensus on the pressing need to act now to begin debris removal activities,” he said in an ESA press release at the end of a four-day conference in Darmstadt, Germany.<\/a><\/p>\n

“Our understanding of the growing space debris problem can be compared with our understanding of the need to address Earth’s changing climate some 20 years ago,” he said.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not just a consensus, but an expert consensus.\u00a0 Those carry more weight.\u00a0 Nearly as much weight as Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell having a tryst.\u00a0 Sorry for the visuals.<\/p>\n

Okay, they say there are 23,000 pieces larger than 10 cm, and many more that are smaller.\u00a0 Even if they’re small, they can be devastating if they hit something, just because of the speeds they travel.\u00a0 This makes sense.\u00a0 But think about this next paragraph for a second.<\/p>\n

They heard proposals aimed at removing the largest chunks of debris out of orbit at the rate of five to 10 items per year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article mentions we’ve been putting stuff in space for 55 years.\u00a0 Sounds about right.\u00a0 My handy calculator says that 23,000 \/ 55 is 418.18.\u00a0 Now, if I take 418.18 and subtract 10 from it, I get 417.18.\u00a0 That means if we spend a fortune trying to remove all the crap up there, we’ll have a net gain of 417.18 pieces of crap added per year instead of 418.18.\u00a0 Hardly seems worth it.\u00a0 Yeah, I know.\u00a0 If it saves just one satellite, it will be worth it.<\/p>\n

Now, if I were cynical, which I’m not, I’d think these experts are setting themselves up for some major grant money, which means the Democrat party will come up with a space junk tax.\u00a0 If I were a Democrat, I’d just tack a “fee” onto phone and cable bills because they have satellites and stuff.\u00a0 It’s safe to predict this because no members of the Democrat party are going to read this.\u00a0 It’s not a Democrat party echo chamber.\u00a0 They’ll think it up on their own, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“There is a wide and strong expert consensus on the pressing need to act now to begin debris removal activities,” he said in an ESA press release at the end of a four-day conference in Darmstadt, Germany. “Our understanding of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrat-party","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.clw54.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}