Space station astronauts give huge trash can the boot

[WhiteTara]

http://news.yahoo.com/space-station-astronauts-huge-trash-boot-122814689.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The International Space Station just got a whole lot tidier.

A pair of NASA astronauts released a capsule loaded with 1.5 tons of trash Friday as the space station soared over Bolivia. The capsule should re-enter the atmosphere and burn up harmlessly over the Pacific on Saturday.

NASA supplier Orbital ATK launched the capsule to the space station in December, full of food, clothes and other goods. The astronauts removed the precious contents, then filled it with garbage and old equipment for incineration.

Commander Scott Kelly and Timothy Kopra, the Americans on board, sent computer commands to set the Cygnus free. The stunning 250-mile-high view showed the capsule slowly backing away, its two circular solar wings looking like open umbrellas.

Kelly, who's less than two weeks from wrapping up an unprecedented yearlong mission for NASA, thanked everyone who worked on the Cygnus — "this great vehicle."

[Orrex]

1. We should get rid of all the world's trash that way

[WhiteTara]

2. You mean just pollute space? nt

[Cleita]

5. Maybe we could send our spent nuclear waste rods into the sun

Battlestar Galactica style. I'm with you about just sending garbage into space. Already there is too much space trash orbiting the Earth.

[snooper2]

6. No, just Bolivia

[Orrex]

9. No, I mean send it up to the space station and have them dump it

[WhiteTara]

11. Oh, okay. nt

[itsrobert]

4. Burn it up in the Earth's atmosphere?

Im okay wit a few containers here and there. But all the world's trash?

[snooper2]

7. Find a cost effective way to send it to the sun, along with nuclear waste

Easy Peasy!

Sun will be like YUM YUM YUM FEED ME MORE!

[zipplewrath]

8. Until a failed launch

This is all well and good until one of the launch vehicles fails and falls back to earth. There was a big kerfuffle several years ago when we launched a deep space probe with a spend plutonium electrical generator up. Imagine trying to launch a bunch-o-spent rods up.

[Orrex]

10. This was already tried in the acclaimed documentary Superman IV

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

3. If you see a big brown cloud in the sky

it's 1.5 tons of burned up desiccated poop.