I asked a couple of friends to mail things to me with only the extended zipcode for an address. When they tried to drop it at the counter, the clerk insisted that they "properly" address the envelope. Mail dropped anonymously into a curbside box came through with the city and state penciled in by hand, by someone at the post office.

The sorting machines probably require city and state.

Some day, school children may spend Earth Day in spacesuits cleaning up space garbage like this.

But seriously, it seems that Earth orbit is getting more crowded all the time, and will only get more crowded as countries like China and India gradually increase the number of satellites they put up over time. Heck, even Iran just got into the satellite launching business the other day when they put their homegrown Omid satellite into orbit, and reportedly have 7 more satellites in the works.

Falcon, any thoughts on the Kessler Syndrome? His theory is this sort of collision will release a bunch of debris that will bust up other satellites. The debris from those new hits will cause an exponential growth/cascading effect resulting in large numbers of satellites being destroyed.

Because hey, we don't already have enough to worry about.

-Blast

We need a statistician to figure the likelihood of this having been an accident. Seems to me that the odds are the only odds worse than the Texas Rangers winning the world series.

I'm guessing that problems with GPS satellites could make today's warfare difficult.

I think Google Earth has a space junk plugin that gives info on debris around Earth.

Between an impenetrable band of space pollution and 2012 "solar maximus" solar flare activity, I guess we'd better hurry up with our underground cities.

This is almost the case. The POSTNET (and I think PLANET) bar codes you find on delivered envelopes are encoded with the 9-digit zip code, a 2-digit delivery point code, and a 1-digit check code (which can be calculated yourself). You can find the 9-digit zip code and the 2-digit delivery point code via the USPS web site. (The 2-digit delivery point code will be in the Mailing Industry Information link to the right of the results display. It is usually the last two digits of the street address number or box number.) With just that information (and calculating the final check digit), you can create the POSTNET barcode which is unique for each deliverable address.

Now, if I could just figure out how to use the approved pre-sorted postage of only 32¢ when using these barcodes, I would be a very happy person.

Blast I do support his theory, when I use to process the space shuttle for over 10 years we were constantly repairing damage from so called micro meteorites. There is so much junk flying around in both low and high earth orbit from man alone not to worry about space meteorites. At one time it was just the US who tracked space debris and we offered that information to other countries for free. The problem is based on excessive amounts of money and just plain stupidity.

Every third world country wants to get into this game not to mention Russia and Europe who've been in this game for a long time. Every time a rocket is sent into space, everything from paint chips, bolts that are pyro sheared, etc. is cut loose from the vehicle only to slowly return to earth. Depending on how high the rocket goes depends on how long the debris takes to reenter. The shuttle was the only space friendly vehicle designed to keep debris to an absolute minimum. To give you an example we took a hit from a paint chip (no metal) from a old Russian rocket that put a deep hole in a 1/4 stainless steel radiator on the payload doors that came close to breaching the freon core. The shuttle was moving at roughly 17,580 miles an hour and the paint chip was traveling at a similar speed the other direction, the impact was at 35160 mph roughly and the damage was incredible for a spec of paint. It's like how we use water to cut though metal with small amounts of sand in the mix, enough pressure and velocity you can cut through just about anything. Anyhow I know I'm rambling again, sorry but to shorting it up if any debris hits anything in space at the right speed and velocity it's catastrophic and all the tracking stations do is keep the military satellites, shuttle, ISS and the Aurora from hitting big stuffs by warning or sending the command to get clear (which depletes the fuel over time). Any civilian or other countries satellites are fair game and it's up to that country to be proactive. In time I think you'll see more things taken out by debris, the military stuff you'll never hear about it in less you live in Australia where all the junk falls at.

Oops did I say Aurora, that doesn't exist

Fair enough, I didn't flesh out my thought. My concern is the wider effects of the loss of communications satellites as a whole, most of which live in only a few orbits.

What percentage of telecom traffic were there is more than 100 miles between the parties goes over land lines, vs satellite? 500 miles? I know that the undersea cables can't maintain global communications at their current level, they don't have the band width. That gives us greatly reduced vox telephone traffic, plus the interweb which I have very real doubts that most government agencies and major corporations could survive without for any length of time. And you might even see rationing of the phone circuits, so that government and "critical commercial" traffic gets through. That's going to have people really annoyed in about two or three hours.

Loss of communications has major economic issues, all negative. The good news is that no one past, say, Boston would know that after noon just about badly the busted oracle on Wall Street paniced, that would itself trigger panic. Add in the loss of business due to that loss of communications. And without good communications, even if you have power, good luck with plastic. I know I'd be making a trip to my bank's major local bank first thing in the morning (no web, I've got the day off- our software is web based), because I know by noon there will be a run. (Hypocracy, I know.) And that is just the first two or three days.

At the same time, the loss of the comm sats means that there will be a disruption of TV. I know, big deal, but lets face it- it is the modern pacifier. With luck, people will talk to their families and neighbors, yeah! But how many of us believe in good luck- if you trust in luck that much, you wouldn't have a water and long shelf life food and probably ammunition squirreled away. I expect a small but very loud portion of the population will wake up, and they aren't people we want unsedated, bored, and roaming the streets waiting to find out that they can't get money, and their plastic is no good. I'd give it that first two or three days before we started to see riots due to a full comm outage.

Never mind what it would do with long range shipping by road, rail, sea or air. Or international trade.

That is why I worry about the communications birds getting taken out. I don't care about what was done for thousands of years. Twenty years ago we weren't addicted to the web and GPS. Twenty years ago we didn't put something north of 80% of our transactions on plastic, and we didn't have stores that try to refuse cash and flat out won't take a check. That is where we are now. And it isn't going to get better without a hard, painful spasm.

Except the British who had developed a Sat Launcher then proudly told the rest of the world 'Nah, its not for us, we can't really be bothered'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBRgdhgakKE