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>> Joe: Picture earth. Handsome planet, right? Now, picture our earth surrounded by thousands
upon thousands of satellites integral to communication and life as we know here on the ground. Pretty
cool right. Oddly beautiful in a we’re totally polluting space kind of way. Now, imagine
around 300,000 thousand pieces of orbital debris, or space junk, flying through space
at outrageous speeds. We’re talking things as tiny as screws whipping through the blackness
to large pieces of discarded rockets traveling at high speeds in low orbits. This space junk
is a problem. Because this space junk may someday collide with a satellite or something
and start a cataclysmic event where one thing gets his and explodes, and then that hits
something and explodes and so on and so on and that would be bad. It hasn’t happened
yet, but it could. And that would suck. Matthew Colless, director of the Australian National
University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics says, “We’re perhaps
only a couple of decades away from a catastrophic cascade of collisions ... that takes out all
the satellites in low orbit.”
>> This can’t happen so, some forward thinking smarties from Matthew’s school are developing
lasers to shoot up, from earth, at space debris, to disintegrate it, with incredible accuracy.
NASA contracted the down under folk to find a way to clean up our space mess and with
20 Million from the Australian government and 40 million from private investors, they
plan on developing super duper infared lasers to mount on a telescope at Mount Stromlo Observatory.
>> So basically, some lucky dude is going to spend his days playing the ultimate video
game, sitting at the controls of a big *** telescope, searching out targets in space,
and blasting them into smithereens with a laser. I’m sure it’ll be way more complicated
and boring than my simplified, adolescent space game scenario. Oh, and don’t worry
about frying important stuff on accident. Matthew says, “There’s no risk of missing
and hitting a working satellite. We can target them precisely. We really don’t miss.”
Cocky.
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