[QUOTE=Creaking Door;2227263]Yes, but I wonder when NASA started tracking all the junk; was the technology even available on some of the earlier Space Shuttle missions? I don’t dispute it is all tracked now.

Did you read all the posts in this thread?

My ‘anti-gravity spaceships and particle-beam weapons’ joke was in reference to a completely outlandish claim made in the original post.[

Yes I read it all, and I agree with you it’s bull****. just lifted this from NASA site.
More than 500,000 pieces of debris, or “space junk,” are tracked as they orbit the Earth. They all travel at speeds up to 17,500 mph, fast enough for a relatively small piece of orbital debris to damage a satellite or a spacecraft.

Seriously, I’m not sure exactly how you would track or categorise all space junk, maybe just the ‘dangerous’ stuff, but I know what is tracked runs into thousands of objects. At least the ‘space snake’ seems to be travelling very slowly relative to the Space Shuttle and being (probably) a piece of flexible hose does not represent that much of a hazard.

I know that on one Space Shuttle mission one of the windscreens was cracked by a piece of space-debris travelling in the opposite direction at several thousands miles an hour…

…the debris was later analysed as a fleck of paint!

Maybe that’s when NASA started tracking all the space-debris?

I think the shuttle orbited at about 17.000mph, imagine hitting a bolt at that speed, so that’s why every piece is tracked.

Right, and that’s when NASA employ their fleet of anti-gravity spaceships equipped with particle-beam weapons?

Sorry, I couldn’t resist! 🙂

I really is tracked constantly, that means all the time.
Sorry , I couldn’t resist LOL 🙂

Here is a highly-trained NASA astronaut mission specialist mistaking a piece of space-junk for a living creature:

http://youtu.be/fVkIArOlx44

Cue the creepy music, smoke some dope, and be convinced by the amazing ‘space snake’!!!

It seems a silly thing to do, put a space shuttle in the same orbit as a piece of space junk seeing as all the orbits of said junk are monitored 24/7

I would guess the aircraft are still owned by the Americans and have to be kept indoors? The B29 would sink into the grass surely?

You might be right with the first part of that, but I’m sure I’ve seen a number of pics over the years of most of WW2 Bombers parked on grass.

What I find odd is that the US don’t have their own manned launch capability anymore and nobody seems concerned about it.

How much trouble would it be to line them up for the weekend show.

If I may the only way a “Typhoon” could be navalised would be to go back to a blank drawing board.

The intake position and associated front landing gear mounting are more than a little not good for a naval aircraft in my opinion.

Already been looked in to. 🙂

In February 2011, BAE debuted a navalised Typhoon in response to the Indian tender. The model offered is STOBAR capable, corresponding to the Indian Navy’s future Vikrant class aircraft carrier. The changes needed to enable the Typhoon to launch by ski-jump and recover by arrestor hook added about 500 kg to the airframe. If however the Indian Navy pursues a catapult launch carrier, the Typhoon is uncompetitive against tender rivals (e.g. Rafale and Super Hornet) since meeting “… catapult requirements would add too much weight to the aircraft, blunt performance and add substantially to modification costs”.[26]