3 ms·

With what?

• AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Basically, if you're getting shipments (I understand this situation was caused by a lack of a shipment/rocket), and you might need to dump stuff, you'd send some "disposal rocket". But I get it, until Starship changes the game, every kilogram is precious. As for people discussing breakup uncertainty or inability to target the Pacific, I mean, the pacific ocean is 12,000 miles wide. I get that reentry isn't a perfect parabola/piece of cake with all the sci-fi hooks about "bouncing off the atmosphere". Anyway, they "jettisoned" it, which to me implies some sort of delta-v, some awareness of its vector/orbit, etc.
  • extraduder_ire 3y ago
    They did not have the pallet removed in time to put it on the departing JAXA HTV cargo spacecraft, which has some control over where it burns up. It would not fit on any craft operated by NASA. (I haven't checked if it would fit into a cygnus, but I doubt it) "Jettisoning" things from the ISS is actually pretty straightforward, you just drop or throw it out the back (aft) and its orbit should decay faster than your spacecraft. (IIRC, you really don't want to throw it straight down) JAXA has an airlock that takes great advantage of this for launching cubesats.