There are significant costs involved in returning something like this. Not
only are the fuel costs real (making orbit changes uses more fuel if you
have more mass), but there is the time cost of transferring an object to the
cargo bay and securing it, and the corresponding cost of the lost time that
could be used for something mission related.
It's one thing to bring back a bag of garbage, and something else altogether
to return something the size of a satellite. (BTW, objects this size or
larger do decay and reenter every few days.)
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Catterton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Del Waterbury" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Space junk - marine life - shame on NASA
why could they not have returned it to earth on a shuttle that was going
to be returning to earth anyway?
No extra cost involved there.
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