Matt fired the thrusters on his ship just for the briefest of moments. His locating equipment was warning him of an object just to his right.
Why can’t I see it!
As his ship slowly floated into position the magnification raised on his screen revealing the tiny shiny metal object. Matt used the mechanical arm attached to his ship to pluck the tiny metal object out of space. Turning the object back and forth in front of his window he realized that the darn thing was a screw! Matt groaned in irritation before using the arm to tuck the bolt safely into a compartment in the side of the ship.
Space litter was a problem for all ships. One tiny bolt colliding with a moving ship was the equivalent of a bullet being fired at the ship at point blank range. Many crews and many ships had been lost to these disasters, spilling more debris out into space.
A few months ago, Matt had suggested to his father that someone should go out there and pick up all that litter.
Matt rolled his eyes. How did this become my job?
->photo credit: 3rd UFO Sighting around Shuttle Endeavor since May 16th launch date, Video. via photopin (license) <-
Every day (excluding sundays) I will be writing a post about something that begins with the letter for that day. Most of the time you will find a sci-fi flash fiction piece here.
For Readers: Though this is fictional there really is over 19,000 pieces of space debris floating in Earth orbit being tracked by NASA. They have to prepare flight plans to keep any vehicles from being hit by it or it could severely damage the ship.
So... what say you? Should we go up there and collect it all- or wait decades till it all falls/burns back to Earth (as it will eventually)?
That's really interesting about the speed/impact of space litter. I have a feeling that collecting it would be too expensive, but I hope no astronaut loses their life to a collision with the junk.
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