Amazingly he has no problem criticizing others with his own self-imposed ignorance. Which actually makes him even more pathetic.

In an attempt to decrease your patheticism know this: The atmosphere expands and contracts, and while we do have an idea approximately where that point is w/n a kilometer or so right now, it is rather hard to predict it days in advanced, and it isn't exactly a consistant point all the way around the planet.
This object is moving around 18,000 mph. So being off just a bit means thousands of miles… not to mention the fact, gathering data on all dimensional points can get a bit mind boggling.
The orbit is deteriorating very slowly and not exactly consistantly… which also brings up the possibility that it may skip off the atmosphere a bit before it slows up enough to fall, or it could just 'dig in' and drop/slow down quicker than expected.

I could go into more specifics, but obviously you aren't ready for it.

Obviously if we're going to be flying more payloads and working in orbit (generating more garbage) the status quo wont do.

There has to be a more refined way to junk things than to wait for a half billion dollar launch of the shuttle or giving it the heave-ho overboard.

No, we can't put a retro rocket on every single piece of debris (the only solution is to get better at not creating the stuff, which resents a far greater hazard to *other* objects in orbit), no, no one is even going to pay what SpaceX would charge to launch something (and that 'something' would not be theirs, it would be just another customer payload) to rendezvous with everything, and when something *is* de-orbited in a controlled manner (Jules Verne), someone *still* objects…

Hear hear.

Quite frankly, this constant "what a waste" whining gets really tiresome. The only way to deal with space junk the way you seem to want it dealt with implies a massive orbital infrastructure, including a junkyard, with at least a few fuel plants installed in ice-rich near-Earth asteroids or comets. That's the only way to have the fuel needed to send the junk back and forth until it gets recycled, and/or, deorbit everything in a controlled fashion. While we're at the stage of having no industrial infrastructure whatsoever beyond Earth we simply cannot allocate the resources needed to do that. Someday, yeah, we might be able to do it. But now? Absolutely no way.

Going up to orbit is not simply a question of intercomming to Scotty to beam you up (preferably with your clothes on). In real life, things are much, much more complicated than that.

"The final hours of the large chunk of space debris are being closely tracked by NASA and the U.S. Space Surveillance Network as a precaution. Although no bits of the EAS are expected to pose a danger to people on the ground, NASA's space station program manager said "we just need to be cautious."

They why can they not tell us where it's going to hit if and when? They have to have some idea. The point is they do have an idea and really worried about right now.

Looks like they would give everyone a heads up! I'll be watch the sky tonight!!! Would be something to see!

As for lawsuits, The Outer Space Treaty, which the US is a signatory to, makes the launching government liable for any of its stuff that comes down in any other country. That's clear. Though it took some teeth pulling, the Soviet Union, for example, did pay Canada for the cleanup of radioactive remnants of Cosmos 954, for example.

No, we can't put a retro rocket on every single piece of debris (the only solution is to get better at not creating the stuff, which resents a far greater hazard to *other* objects in orbit), no, no one is even going to pay what SpaceX would charge to launch something (and that 'something' would not be theirs, it would be just another customer payload) to rendezvous with everything, and when something *is* de-orbited in a controlled manner (Jules Verne), someone *still* objects…

And remember, about 70% of this planet is *still* covered with water. The odds of surviving pieces, if any, doing anything but joining assorted megatons of ships on the sea bottom are still pretty good…

Even the position of planets, stars and galaxies can't be determined with infinite precision, and this object is likely to tumble and present drag in unknowable, chaotic ways. Indeed, a tumbling re-entry is *more* likely to assure desruction than one that is not.

You can expect more of this, when the Shuttle (and its superior downmass capability, compared to Orion) leaves service.

i dunno

I could see them making a lunchbox sized device that can deorbit machinery like this and/or help us track it better.
Of course you'd have to devote storage space to the things in advance, and theres no telling what could happen if one malfunctions and boosts crap in the wrong direction.

Maybe they could have duct taped it to an outgoing Soyuz service module… but then there would be safety issues. Not to mention that these ships were not designed to maneuver with external loads.

The only reasonable solution seems to be what we do now. Let low earth orbit clean itself and try our best to stay out the way.

First – look at the shape of the thing. It has something like a 2:1 aspect ratio. It will have twice the resistance if it is face on rather than edge-on. The resistance it gets will depend on its exact attitude, and spin, and these in turn will also alter its attitude and spin. The other thing is the edge of the earth's atmosphere. This is not a uniform sphere. It has wisps and bulges. As you re-enter, you do not feel a smooth deceleration as you might expect from a very thin gas, but a series of slams.

The re-entry policy sound. The unwanted lump of stuff has been pushed into an orbit where it will encounter enough of the upper atmosphere to slow it down and re-ender in a year or so. It is not going to stay up there. It is not using some separate rocket that would have to be carried up into space with it, and then have all the risks of perhaps not working as planned. The device is staying as one big lump so it is easy to track. Simple is good.

That they can estimate the drag enough to figure out which month it will fall in is impressive enough.

We can track entire planets*, stars* and galaxies*, yet something right outside our atmosphere, incredibly close to satellites (of which i'm sure there are many last time i checked), we can't even track it…

If i get hit by anything and die, I will be sorely pissed off NASA!

* as far as we know.

Cheers, Ian

Unless this news is actually from last month, this date should say Nov. 2nd instead of Oct. 2nd.