Re: [sarex] Mir

["Frank H. Bauer" <frank.bauer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John,

WRT the Mir re-entry....I hope that you do not see the re-entry in the 
UK.  I really hope that very few get to witness this event first hand.  The 
reason I say that is that if you see the re-entry in the UK, it means that 
pieces of Mir will most likely rain over the European continent.  This, 
indeed, would be a major disaster.

In June of last year, my team at NASA Goddard was responsible for 
re-entering the most massive spacecraft ever deployed by the space shuttle, 
the Gamma Ray Observatory.  We worked very hard to make sure that this 
spacecraft re-entered the Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific so that all 
its pieces landed in un-inhabitable parts of the Pacific ocean, south of 
Hawaii.  The only people that witnessed this event were some that saw the 
re-entry from the Hawaiian islands using telescopes and some aircraft-based 
cameras that validated that the spacecraft did re-enter where predicted.  I 
will tell you from experience that re-entering a spacecraft is not an easy 
job.  A few seconds delay or minor changes in spacecraft thrusting can send 
the spacecraft on a significantly divergent course than was 
planned.  Remember that a spacecraft is moving at 7.5 km/sec so small 
errors make big changes in the groundtrack.

As a individual that was responsible for flight qualifying the RF filter 
used in the Mir ham radio system, I will feel the loss with many others in 
the ham community when Mir re-enters.  However, for everyones sake, let's 
all hope that Mir will land in uninhabitable waters.

Great question John!

73,  Frank Bauer, KA3HDO


At 06:15 PM 3/13/01 +0000, John wrote:
>Hi all first time I've post an email here, but after watching the news
>today and seeing the picture of MIR above Japan just wondered if anyone
>knows if we are likly to see any thing in the UK. Cheers John....
>--
>*******************************************
>* John McCarthy                           *
>* G7JTT/2E0AEZ/M5AEZ                      *
>* Email john@jmkl.freeserve.co.uk         *
>* Website http://www.jmkl.freeserve.co.uk *
>*******************************************
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