STAN FREBERG HERE...Flying Space Junk Stan Freberg here. Apparently, there's a lot of space junk whizzzing around up there--spent rocket casings, cast-off parts of various spacecraft. How many pieces of debris? Thousands. Whizzing how fast? Tell you when I come back. [:60 SPOT BREAK] Freberg here, talking about litter. In outer space, that is. Today, the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs is tracking around 8000 objects at various altitudes. Everything from an astronaut's glove to spent satellites. "A glove?" you say. "What's the big deal?" Well, the big deal is all these objects are whizzing around Earth at about 17,000 miles per hour, and could cause potential problems for astronauts walking in space.
"Buzz, have you seen my glove?...Watch yourself!" Now, a one-ton Chinese military spy satellite is headed to Earth in a few months. Hmm. Since the "space age" began in 1957, there have been more than 4500 spacecraft lobbed into orbit, mostly by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. The one-ton Chinese satellite is expected to survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, and fall to Earth sometime in late March or early April. Remind me to be out of town at that time. Out of town??? Out of PLANET is more like it!
Was Chicken Licken right after all? Heads up, everybody! This is the increasingly paranoid Stan Freberg here. Copyright ©1995, Stan Freberg/Freberg, Ltd. (but not very)
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