宇宙ゴミ

Was watching a JAXA program on Niconico Live Broadcast about space debris, but I couldn't finish it because...

I couldn't stand the host, who had no intelligent things to say and couldn't even elicit reasonable reactions while the JAXA guy (Kibe-san) explained!

You could literally hear the awkwardness and emptiness in the "…へー" she forced out in futile attempts to fill in the silence at the end of the JAXA guy's sentences. She was also hard to hear when reading off the questions on the sheet, even though she's supposed to be a newscaster...

While the topic of space debris is of high interest to me, the scope covered in the broadcast seemed to be rather basic, most of which I learned through watching Planetes many years ago (a really excellent anime that also, for once, depicts space in a realistic way!).

Slightly surprised that a lot of people leaving comments didn't know the reason behind the sudden spike in space debris in 2007: China doing an anti-satellite missile test on their weather satellite Fengyun-1C.

This egoistic and stupid move by China resulted in more than 2300 space debris of trackable size (golf ball size) and over 35000 pieces of smaller debris (1cm or larger, enough to damage or even destroy vehicles in space due to their extreme high speed). Even the dust-sized ones (numbered in roughly 1 million) can cause damage and wear down parts.

While the main method for removing space debris as portrayed in Planetes is very unlikely to happen even if the technology and techniques are available, it's always encouraging to read about the latest developments in the field.

宇宙（そら）はロマンだ！