I was recently watching a Star Trek episode (original, 1960's), and it was implied that if the Enterprise (it was about 350 meters long, 75 meters high, and 75 meters wide) completely shut off its engines in orbit of your standard planet, then it would start to burn up in the atmosphere in only an hour or so. Now, I recall a recent conversation on SeeSat about that the larger an object is, the faster it will decay. Could such an object decay in only an hour or so, from the orbit, of, say, ISS or Mir? I find this particular development in the Star Trek episode somewhat physically impossible, and attibuted it to a lack of knowledge of orbits (after all, the first satellite was launched only ten years before), or does it have an element of truth? Jonathan Wojack tlj18@juno.com ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jun 05 2000 - 09:20:08 PDT