The Australian physician and anti nuclear campaigner, Helen Caldicott, has since the late 1970s worked with Bruce Gagnon and Karl Grossman from Space For Peace to keep space free from weapons and nuclear material. And all had tried to prevent the deployment, in 1997, of the space probe Cassini to Saturn with 72 pounds of Plutonium-238 on board. A launch accident could have dispersed the deadliest material known to man across our planet.
Space Junk has become an important topic. As early as 2001 Bruce Gagnon was describing that of all the man-made objects in Low Earth Orbit, 95% are space junk: rocket thrusters, derelict satellites, and most of all, tiny fragments of debris from collisions and explosions. These pieces of space junk in earth orbit are flying at 17,500 mph and even a small bolt could break the observation windows of the Space Station.
Space Junk is an environmental crisis that is almost completely invisible to most of us even though it can already be observed in the night sky above. Even though neither Helen, Bruce or Karl are voices in this documentary I want to credit them for their 40 years of activism on Space for Peace.
So here today is an update. In the last 20 years the International Space Station had to be moved 29 times to avoid a space junk collision. Three times in 2020 alone. On July 4, 2021, a German think tank entitled WELT Group released a documentary: SPACE JUNK – Fast And Dangerous. The Welt Group is part of the German Mediahouse founded by the ultra-conservative media Tzar Axel Springer. It is such an interesting documentary because it is not done from an environmentalist perspective. The danger from Space Junk has become so daunting that industry and the military are becoming concerned, but are also going ahead full blast with new launches.
Speakers were three German scientists, Ulrich Walter, astronaut and scientist; Metin Tolan, Experimental Physicist; and Manual Metz, Astrophysicist. Published on the YouTube channel of “Welt” on July 4, 2021, the documentary contains some of the most recent data and statistics. Even – or maybe because their approach is not primarily environmental – and their views are more conservative, I found their reporting very interesting.
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