One doesn’t need to be big to pack a big punch, not at 20,000 miles per hour. In the Columbus Dispatch earlier this week Kevin Mayhood took readers to the University of Dayton for a look at a space gun. It’s a long cylinder that fires aluminum BBs at the impact speeds at which orbiting spacecraft can encounter micrometeoroids or, more and more, bits and pieces shed by other spacecraft. The story is a feast for gadget-lovers and mayhem-freaks, filled with the details of how one gets a pellet going so fast, the damage it causes, and the behavior of windows, metal skins, and other exposed parts of, say, a shuttle when hit by one. The idea is to gather tips for making spacecraft tougher. Not much here on solving the basic problem — the growing cloud of debris. What we need are some huge brooms in orbit to sweep it up.

-CP

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories, Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.