Interest

In which Rats from Outer Space confess

Good time of day, humans!

Thanks to our contacts with Rats from Outer Space, we can now provide some insight into the causes of recent increased extraterrestrial activity.

Space trash has long been recognized as a potential problem. Back in 1960s, Polish sci-fi writer Stanisław Lem wrote, tongue-in-cheek:

Professor Bruckee from the observatory complained to me recently that both stars in Centaurus were growing dim. How can they not grow dim when the entire area is filled with trash? Around the heavy planet Sirius, the chief attraction of this system, is a ring like those of Saturn, but formed of beer bottles and lemonade containers. An astronaut flying that route must dodge not only swarms of meteors but also tin cans, eggshells, and old newspapers. There are places where you cannot see the stars, for all the rubbish. For years astrophysicists have been racking their brains over the reason for the great difference in the amounts of cosmic dust in various galaxies. The answer, I think, is quite simple: the higher a civilization is, the more dust and refuse it produces¹.

For decades, the cost of creating space trash was quite high and stagnant, but that’s now changing:

The cost of taking a kilogram of tra… er, stuff to low Earth orbit. source: Visual Capitalist

We’ll be hearing about space trash much more often in the future.

CWCID: kitten seeking answers reminded us of various plans to send more stuff up in: Baron Capital expects a 15X return on SpaceX & The Elon “Magic Sauce”

1. Let Us Save the Universe (An Open Letter from Ijon Tichy), in: Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy, 1983 English edition; the story itself is from 1964 (to my somewhat limited knowledge)