Space debris

“ The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. ”

“ One theory is ships only, and maybe a couple of hunks of meteoric debris in the beginning. Another theory says there may be a particularly heavy small asteroid in this maze of wrecks somewhere—you know, superheavy stuff with the atoms stripped of their electrons and the nuclei squeezed together, weighing in the neighborhood of a couple of tons per square inch. ”

“ Without avoidance methods, the current debris density means there will on average be one collision per satellite every 50 years in LEO, with a piece of debris that is 10 cm or larger [4] . However, large objects are tracked and orbital elements made publicly available, so that potential collisions can be predicted and actively avoided. ‘Conjunctions’, where one satellite passes within a few km of another, happen many times every year, but so far only one major accidental collision has taken place. ”

“ With greater care in the design and disposal of satellites, much of it could be avoided. However, the creation of debris an integral and unavoidable consequence of the testing and use of space weapons. The contribution of military activities to the Earth's 'debris belt' could grow greatly if plans to place large numbers of satellite-based weapons and weapons-related sensors are realized. ”

“ When two great masses come into collision in space, it is certain that a large part of each is melted; but it seems also quite certain that in many cases a large quantity of débris must be shot forth in all directions, much of which may have experienced no greater violence than individual pieces of rock experience in a landslip or in blasting by gunpowder. ”

“ We will make these globes in countless thousands, each with its charge, and release them. Each globe will have a device that will repel any other, so that they do not detonate each other. We will sow the surface of our atmosphere with these deadly air-mines! Sooner or later the ship or ships cruising to and fro on our atmosphere's surface will strike one and will be destroyed by its detonating charge. In this way, and only in this way, can we fight back against the beings from space who are releasing this horror on us! ”

“ With inconceivable fury cylinders and fliers soared and fought and fell above great Neptune's roof, the air filled with falling wreckage, our great battle reaching now an undreamed-of phase of intensity, as gleaming cylinders and faceted ball-like space-fliers were annihilated alike by hundreds! ”

“ Now the attacking ships were leaping up toward us, flashing up lightning-like with ghostly beams of death whirling and stabbing about and toward us, and now, over the wild clamor of sudden battle in the hull beneath, I heard the great cry of Jhul Din, beside me.
"Space-ships in thousands, and they're attacking us! They've come from somewhere toward our galaxy—have come out of outer space itself to attack our universe!" ”

“ The evolution of defense against nature had been steady and progressive, from the stone age, when prehistoric man sought shelter in caves from the pelting hailstones, to the present one in which they were about to whip out of its course a planet that was running wild through the solar system.
There in front of her, just outside the deadlight through which she was gazing, and silhouetted against the shining disk of the asteroid, was that terrible weapon, the generator of the disintegrating ray. In a few minutes, it would be hurling its mysterious beam across the void of space. ”

“ Already chance meteors were whirling through space about us as we shot on, cylinder or space-flier here and there in the two racing, grappling fleets vanishing in white-hot flashes of heat and fire as a meteor struck them. But other and more cylinders and space-fliers were vanishing in wreckage beneath the cleaving rays from either fleet, and both were racing on so intent upon our terrific struggle as to notice hardly at all the vast whirling rings before us! ”

“ To right and left, like light, drove the deadly weapon-rays of our massed space-fliers as we seized the opportunity and leaped upon the Neptunians. Ample was the revenge we had upon them in that moment, since the concentrated rays tore through and wrecked hundreds of their own cylinders as we sprang upon them! Fleeing from before us for the moment, flashing away toward giant Neptune's tremendous green disk ahead, they strove to reform while we leaped after them and harried them with every weapon-ray which our space-fliers could emit. ”

“ You have to feel the desolation as you fly over that center of bare, splashed rock in which nothing may ever grow again until the planet itself disintegrates, and see around that dead core the violently boiling life of the Ring.
It was a perimeter of life brushed by the powers of death. The sun-forces unleashed by the bombs gave life, a new, strange, mutable life that changed and changed and changed and would go on changing until a balance was finally struck again on this world which for three hours reeled in space under the blows of an almost cosmic disaster. ”

“ Now, you scum of the Solar System, you shall be permitted to witness an entrancing spectacle on the way to our headquarters, where all your knowledge is to be taken from you before you die, lingeringly and horribly. There is a strange space-vessel nearing us probably searching for the one we took and which you dogs of Callisto must have been fortunate enough to take from us before we could study and kill its human cargo. Watch its destruction and cringe—and know, in your suffering, that the more you suffer, the greater shall be our enjoyment. ”

“ Suppose his funeral rocket landed upon some other planet or, drawn by the pull of the great sun, were thrown into the flaming folds of the incandescent sphere? Then the rocket might continue on out of the solar system, plunging through the endless seas of space for millions of years, to finally enter the solar system of some far-off star, as meteors often enter ours. Suppose his rocket crashed upon a planet, or the star itself, or became a captive satellite of some celestial body? ”

“ Still we were racing onward, our great space-flier hurtling on and on through that asteroid-filled region, escaping those great rushing spheres of death, sometimes by the narrowest of margins. Hour upon hour, keeping our sleepless watch at the flier's windows, we flashed on, its colossal speed still mounting as more and more of our generators' power was turned into the great rear force-ray that pressed back towards Earth and that shot us outward. By that time Earth had become but a bright white star behind us, the sun's size and brilliance decreased by a third or more already. ”

“ Surely never had men worked under stranger circumstances than those, was my thought as we began the work of re-matching the severed connections. For we four, cased in our four great cylindrical metal space-walkers, were falling through space at a tremendous and ever-increasing rate, even as we worked upon our great flier falling with us, we were falling through the mighty void toward the whirling rings of Saturn, looming immense in space beside us. It meant annihilation for us, if we could not complete our repairs in time to escape them! ”

“ Some there were in which the population of a world was halved, and all space for a billion miles about was a vast cauldron of incandescent energy in which tremendous fleets of space ships swirled and fused like ingredients in some cosmic brew. Forces were loosed on the three planets that sent even their mighty masses reeling drunkenly out of their orbits, and space itself seemed to be torn by the awful play of energies.
“Always peace followed—a futile peace. A few brief centuries or a few millennia, and again war would flame. It would end, and life would continue. ”

“ It would be catastrophe enough if the torn-away world never returned to the earth, but sailed forever and ever, round and round its parent planet. Our heroes and their companions would then be marooned without hope of rescue on a fragmentary planet in space, the said planet doomed to become a mere lump of dead and frozen matter adrift in the universe. ”

“ Such a catastrophe would have broken one hundred and thirty planets loose from their orbits, and dashed them together in utter confusion, and would thus have broken up our solar system. The shock produced upon this earth would have thrown every thing on its surface off into boundless space. ”

“ Atel said succinctly. "The metal, of course, is useless, but the vacuum inside is steel-hard to them. Space crushing into space, and gouts of hard radiation bursting like blood from the contact. That's all we have now, that and a feeble energising process which sometimes seals off the foundations of the city. Walls, and clubs! Our last miserable recourses—and then—
"Then the space-beasts will own the Earth again." ”

“ Even those stupendous catastrophes involving planetary fate do not make an irreparable loss in the vast array of celestial objects. The matter saved from such mighty wrecks will again be available for useful ends; the forces which seem destroyed in the terrific convulsions only assume other forms to participate in new movements and operations, and even the space-pervading medium, while dooming the present worlds to an end in the distant future, yet contributes much to bring others into being, and to perpetuate the events and the wonders of our universe. ”

“ And the transmitter couldn't have been knocked out by something that only killed people. It looks as if Ades may have been destroyed."
There was an instant's uncomprehending silence. Then the realization struck home. In all of human history no planet had ever been completely destroyed. Dozens, even hundreds, had been devastated, before wars came to an end by the discovery of a weapon too terrible to be used. Four had been depopulated by that weapon, the fighting-beam. But never before had it even been imagined that a planet could be wiped out of existence. ”

“ On none of our space-charts were they visible, safe from our pursuit out in the void, and we knew that somewhere in that void our sun-swinging craft and all in them were meeting their end, held in the relentless grasp of the attraction-ships and destroyed by them, since the sun-swinging craft could project their own terrific forces only downward. ”

“ At first they could make nothing whatever of it. Upon nearer approach, however, the ghastly distortion grew less and the flatly level expanse of sun-baked mud took on a semblance of rigidity. Directly beneath them they made out something that looked like an immense, flat blister upon the otherwise featureless terrain. Their ship was drawn toward this blister.
A port opened, dwarfed in apparent size to a mere window by the immensity of the structure. Through this port the vast bulk of the space ship was wafted upon the landing bars, and behind it the mighty bronze-and-steel gates clanged shut. ”

“ They killed men and women and children alike in instants of shrieking agony. But no planet could be attacked from space if it was defended by such beams. It was two thousand years since the last attempt at attack from space had been made.
That fleet had been detected far out and swept with fighting-beams and every living thing in the attacking ships died instantly. ”

“ Herb believed.
Unless the planet Earth were exploded, the ever-unstable Universe, itself, would collapse. Already the binding force was dangerously diminished. If new energy were not released within a month, disintegration would begin. The Universe would alter and flow and contract and after the collapse, slowly build itself into a new form—that form itself containing the inherent stresses of change and mutability. Only the arrival of starmen to space flight at the critical time—only their continued vigilance—prevented disaster beyond accounting for. ”

“ At any moment, though, one of those concentrated, pencil-like rays might cleave through our space-flier in a lucky hit, and unless we escaped from these relentless pursuers, the space-flier and ourselves were certain of destruction. This I saw, and saw too that Neptune's colossal cloudy sphere lay close before us, so awful was the speed of our flight and pursuit, and as it loomed gigantic before us, filling the heavens, it was apparent that we would pass close above its surface. Suddenly I turned to Randall, shouted in his ear above the thundering throbbing drone of our generators. ”

“ Out in space, beyond the orbit of the moon, Fierut detected the Washington Monument on his warning device. It was coming too fast to deflect. He tried.
A heartbeat later, it ripped into the steel of the space station. It crumbled and shattered and sprayed marble, and huge fragments erupted from the opposite side. The space station became visible. There was a great, ragged, tunneling hole from rim to rim. Escaping air spewed wreckage into space. Parts of demolished machinery whirled away. In a yet-sealed compartment, a power system exploded with a great, blinding, soundless flash. ”

“ The regions of space beyond our planet are filled with flying fragments. Some meet the earth in its onward rush; others, having attained inconceivable velocity, overtake and crash into the whirling sphere with loud detonation and ominous glare, finding destruction in its molecular armor, or perhaps ricocheting from it again into the unknown. ”

“ Crewmen of the spaceliner waged a losing battle to damp-out the holocaust raging in her stern compartments, and knots of men in clumsy space-suits clustered about the collapsing hull, deluging the plates with Rayburn's Isotope. But the cold of space was too great, and most of the liquified stabilizer dispersed in frost-flakes before it could act on the degenerating metal. Radiation from the masses of spitting magma astern went through the after half of the crippled liner like storms of deadly invisible bullets, striking down the men at their work through weak joints in their armor. ”