COMMENTARY | As if there were not enough problems facing the population of the United States, and the people of Earth for that matter, pollution is now being measured on a galactic level. What was once a tale committed to clever animation or science fiction has come full circle, space junk needs to be cleaned up. Those bits and pieces of old satellites, rockets, and other miscellaneous debris that man has placed in the orbit of space are really starting to concern scientists. However, the situation should concern everybody, and not just NASA and the American people.
The Air Force Space Command is tracking 22,000 items in the orbit of Earth. While that total seems like drop in the massive bucket that is space, collisions between the items are compounding the problems. Of course, the objects are moving at speeds around 10 kilometers a second, which makes them missiles of a variety of sizes.
Maybe the debris only poses a problem to multimillion-dollar satellites which are used for silly things like GPS, communication, television, and other items that are used every day, but eventually the situation is going to get much worse. Because the United States is not solely responsible for the debris, the entire global community needs to pitch in and lend a hand.
The U.S. is responsible for about 30 percent of the space junk floating above Earth, which indicates all that stuff did not get up there for the benefit of Americans. No one has put a price tag on cleaning up space, but it is safe to assume there is a serious price tag on completing a task so monumental. Sure, folks may not care right now, but when communications and entertainment systems start to be shut down because an object less than an inch in diameter destroyed a satellite, people will start caring.
If the United States thinks it should be the only country to react to what is bound to become a more serious problem sometime in the future, it is wrong. Even the Chinese test of warhead that targeted a satellite made the situation that much worse. Sure the U.S. can spearhead the mission with technology and development, but over the course of the next decade or so a solution needs to be in place. Granted, there are far more serious problems impacting America right now, and once the present problems are solved, the space junk problem can be addressed.
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