Throwing Stuff In Space
In my last post about the Russian space program I said that cosmonauts regularly throw stuff in space so it will burn up and not result in permanent space junk. A reader asks whether you can actually do this.. Man, way to ask a hard question. Orbital mechanics says "if a space vehicle comes within 120 to 160 km of the Earth's surface, atmospheric drag will bring it down in a few days, with final disintegration occurring at an altitude of about 80 km", and we can work out how much delta-v a cosmonaut has to impart to get the semi-major axis of the orbit of the debris below 160 km. dVA = sqrt(GM*(2.0/rA - 1.0/((rA + rB) / 2.0))) - sqrt(GM/rA) where rB = 160km + roE where rA = 278km + roE to 460km + roE where roE = 6378.1km where GM = 6.67300 * 5.9742 * 10^24 * 10^-11 with the ISS at 278km the delta-v retrograde is 34.684365m/s or 77.5867148 mph, which is major league baseball. with the ISS at 428km the delta-v retrograde is 77.243278m/s or 172.788292 mph, with is sp...