Chris Hadfield erwähnte, als er erklärte, wie schmutzige Wäsche im Weltraum gehandhabt wird, dass Müll manchmal entsorgt wird, indem man ihn in die Atmosphäre schickt. Hat dieser Prozess Auswirkungen auf das Leben hier auf der Erde? Könnte eines der Materialien oder Gase schädlich sein oder ist es im Vergleich zu natürlichen atmosphärischen Ereignissen wie Meteoriten oder Waldbränden im Wesentlichen harmlos?
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Not a heavy impact, more of a light shower.
The quantity is far too small to have any effect on the global environment. A single trash can being knocked over on the earth would be more damaging.
Imagine the amount of garbage that humans are already burning inside the atmosphere.
The amount of waste the ISS produces is beyond negligible, even if they dumped a thousand times the waste it would still be a thousands of percentile of the amount of waste it would have to be before it stopped being a negligible amount.
Hundreds of millions of people dump their trash and raw sewage directly into the sea every day (though it would be better if they didnt). 10 people dumping their trash (to be mostly incinerated on re-entry) will not have a substantial effect.
There are a few things that are particularly problematic when introduced into the upper atmosphere in particular (ex. aluminum oxide from satellite re-entry may disrupt the ozone layer), but as far as I know astronaut waste does not contain such things in large quantities. And organic compounds find their way into the upper atmosphere on a regular basis, so those are not a concern.
If the entire International Space Station were somehow vaporized and dispersed, it would still account for approximately 0.00000000000874% of the mass of the atmosphere. Nothing we’re doing on that small of a scale is going to have a measurable impact.
This stuff burns up and leaves a cloud of dust in the higher atmosphere. Just another meteor hit.
But the Starlink satellites burning up daily leave a lot of aluminium in the stratosphere. And that diminishes the ozone layer, which just was on the way to be fixed after the Freon disaster of the last century.
I just knew someone was taking a dump on me from a great height, but the Dr said I was paranoid! Now I will be free of this place!
Hadfield is a great Canadian!
Planet big. Astronaut waste small.
How do you think we get REAL chemtrails? Vaporized urine!
Yay Chris Hadfield, my favorite astronaut! Love this guy
The heat from re-entry burns most molecules down to individual atoms in a plasma state.
A lot of space dust hits the atmosphere every year also.