The next great space mission should be protecting the earth from asteroid impacts.

[Stavros]

I have it in my Penguin Modern Poets 5 Corso Ferlinghetti Giinsberg (1970 edition)

God? She's Black

Gases & liquids Her nature
spewing stars like eggs
from Her All Central Womb

Solids & solutions Her procedure
setting solar systems like babies
on Her All Genetic Knee

Formulae & equations Her law
punishing evolution like bad boys
by the slap of Her All Void Hand

Metals & alloys Her chore
raising telescopes like puberty
towards her All Encompassed Eye

Sound & Light Her store
giving speed like youth
thus all Her Sons leave home

Nuclear & space Their war

-Gregory Corso
creating rockets like dead men
-ever to reach her again?

[trish]

Thank you, Stavros.

[sukumvit boy]

LOL , love this place!
How the fuck did we get from asteroids to Gregory Corso?
This is like what happens when a physicist gets seated between a fine arts major and a seminarian at a dinner party.
"...That's right gentlemen , when an asteroid hits ,it's like lots and lots of these..."


Fuck it ! I'd rather talk about Gregory Corso anyway.

[buttslinger]

In High School I was standing at the Washington Monument waiting for the Jefferson Airplane to come on, and I turned aside and Allen Ginsberg was standing next to me.
My Aunt was in NASA, back when it rocked. My Uncle flew a Hellcat and was preparing to invade Japan before we dropped the big one on them.

The first part of the B612 Mission ,for a mere $450 , would put a satellite in an orbit out by Venus

Is that a typo? Cause for 450 bucks I'll fund the entire mission if they name it "THE BUTTSLINGER612"

Yeah, I'll save the earth for you guys, talk is cheap. Check my Stride.

[Stavros]

LOL , love this place!
How the fuck did we get from asteroids to Gregory Corso?
This is like what happens when a physicist gets seated between a fine arts major and a seminarian at a dinner party.
"...That's right gentlemen , when an asteroid hits ,it's like lots and lots of these..."

Fuck it ! I'd rather talk about Gregory Corso anyway.

Let's face it, asteroids are more interesting than hemorrhoids, and space, the stars and the infinite have always inspired artists...as for Corso, I think he is under-rated notwithstanding being in good company as far as Ginsburg and Ferlinghetti go. Marriage is one of my favourite poems and is a hoot when recited out loud...

I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps...nlinepoems.htm

[sukumvit boy]

Yes ,buttslinger , that was supposed to be $ 450 MILLION . But thanks for your interesting funding proposal.
Thanks Stavros ,"Marriage" , brought back fond old memories of when, I too, was a young man . I read all the Beats back in the 60's and 70's as well as the West Coast poets , Gary Snyder is a favorite still.
Just finished Barry Miles's ,"The Beat Hotel"
Agree Corso is probably underrated and relatively little known . I remember reading his "Gasoline" and "The Happy Birthday Of Death " in those wonderful little Pocket Poetry editions from City Lights.

[Stavros]

Back to the theme of the thread -this article appeared in the Telegraph and claims that the threat to the way we live from space debris -especially damage to satellites- is the greater threat. Farming, commerce, the military -all would be thrown into chaos. I quote the opening paragraphs, as it is a rather long article.

Starts here:
Today, every one of us lives well and truly in the space age. We may not yet be taking holidays on the Moon, but our day-to-day lives are becoming more and more reliant on satellite technology. Military surveillance and communications, of course, depend on orbiting hardware, as does television and the navigation systems we use in our cars.

But most people don’t realise that mobile phones, the internet, cashpoint machines and stock markets, not to mention many farms, the emergency services and the National Grid also rely on satellites.

What would happen if we were ever to lose this space-based functionality? It’s not just a hypothetical question. As anyone who has seen last year's film Gravity knows, the low Earth orbits where many satellites reside are full of debris – tens of thousands of bits of “junk”, from nuts and bolts to an astronaut’s glove – which are flying around at speeds of up to 17,000 mph and could cause enormous damage if they collided with any other object.

Even a fleck of paint could have a serious impact. And if one satellite fragments, those fragments can hit other satellites, in a chain reaction that could potentially wipe out a great deal of the world’s orbital assets. Alternatively, if a large solar flare – a huge burp of energetic charged particles – were to be directed towards the Earth, it could inactivate not only satellites in low Earth orbit, but those in the much higher geostationary orbit, such as those used by BSkyB and the BBC.



full article is here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...m-the-sky.html

[trish]

Good article. Thanks. It does a good job at outlining our dependency on satellite communications technology. Everything from agriculture, meteorology, airline navigation, urban planning, traffic control, conservation efforts, archeology and common day users of GPS devices rely on satellite communications. Our sky is full of satellites some as low as a hundred mile up and others as far out as 22 thousand miles.

The first artificial satellite placed in Earth orbit was Sputnik. It was lunched in 1956. Since then our dependency on satellite technology grew exponentially. Imagine returning to the 50’s. Coiled telephone wires, no internet, and no free porn.

But this network of satellites is indeed precarious. For one thing their orbits can be perturbed by meteors. Moreover, low orbits naturally decay being subject to atmospheric drag. But by the greatest danger is the incredible amount of junk we’ve left in Earth orbit. Not only do humans leave litter every place they visit, their robots litter too. Nuts, bolts, screws, rocket fragments, satellite fragments, etc. Yes, and even paint chips can wreak havoc. We attempt to track everything over 5 centimeters in diameter. I believe thats something like 20 thousands pieces of debris now being tracked.

One particularly disturbing and possible scenario was depicted in the film Gravity. A piece of debris collides with a satellite which in turns fragments into a myriad of high velocity projectiles some of which in turn strike other satellites and stations creating a destructive cascade. I don’t know what the estimated probability of such an event is. One would expect the effect of such an event on communications would depend on where in space it occurred; but such events (due to the fact that everything is moving in orbit and the fragments from a collision scatter in random directions) are difficult to confine to one location.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=trish;1485865]

The first artificial satellite placed in Earth orbit was Sputnik. It was lunched in 1956. Since then our dependency on satellite technology grew exponentially. Imagine returning to the 50’s. Coiled telephone wires, no internet, and no free porn.
-- Not sure about that, I am old enough to remember keyholes, and owned a pair of binoculars for many years when living in urban London...

But this network of satellites is indeed precarious. For one thing their orbits can be perturbed by meteors. Moreover, low orbits naturally decay being subject to atmospheric drag.
--Something that would never occur to me, fascinating!

[sukumvit boy]

Yup, 'space junk' is an exponentially growing problem.
The Japanese Space Agency and NASA are preparing missions to test clean up devices.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...t-space-debris
scientists-japan-stars-2-satellite-orbit-space-debris