the human race is horrible - isn't it?

I'm writing this on 9th May 2021 - the morning after a huge piece of rocket crashed back to earth.

This was the remnants of a Chinese rocket used to launch yet another satellite into space.  There are now thousands of these things whizzing around our planet, providing some incredibly essential services and some less so vital.

Trouble is, with every launch it's not just a satellite that ends up orbiting our planet.  Millions of tons of "space junk" - the detritus associated with their launch ends up up there as well.  Most of it will orbit earth for ever but some will fall back down.

what goes up...

So, not content with polluting our planet, we are littering space as well.   To the extent that all this stuff poses a very real threat to the satellites it helped to put up there in the first place.

Oh, the irony.

But the risk isn't confined to just satellites.  Some of this stuff will fall back down to earth.  Lots of it already has.  Until now, anything substantial has ended up in the sea or has crashed down into some vast, uninhabited plain somewhere.

Eventually though, one will hit a populated area.  The Chinese had absolutely zero idea where their latest chunk of rocket would land.  None.  Zilch. Nada.  That is really, really scary.

As the title of this post says: we are terrible custodians of this globe.