Can the weight of the world change as we send more and more stuff into space? Can this be problematic?

Question

Sorry I watched a Science fiction movie yesterday. I'm just curious because they always have hundreds of ships in these movies, people coming and going, and I was wondering in a purely "for fun" kind of way if this could ever cause a problem?

Answer 1

The Earth actually has a net gain of a few tons of mass every year from meteors (shooting stars) that burns up in the atmosphere.

Also, keep in mind the vast majority of things we send up are in Earth orbit, and their orbit eventually decay and fall back to the Earth. Space junk in low earth orbit comes back down quite frequently (like the old Skylab back in the early 1980's when it re-entered the atmosphere and pieces rained down in Australia). Those in higher orbits might take tens or hundreds of years to fall back down, but eventually they will.

So no, the change in the mass of the Earth due to the space program is so insignificant as to be negligible.

What is problematic is space junk-- Their presence makes it dangerous to send manned spacecraft into earth orbit. If your spacecraft gets hit by a significant piece of space junk at orbital speeds, it can be bad. We are talking speeds several times faster than a rifle bullet.

Answer 2

Not really, almost everything that goes up will fall back on Earth sooner or later, so it is only temporary, and the amount is way too small to make any differences. Also, we receive a lot more material from space than we send out, as we got plenty of Meteorites falling on Earth and are mostly metal ones too...

Answer 3

So we send a few tons of stuff to space each year. Big deal. It is a drop in the ocean. Not just a drop in the bucket, a drop in the ocean. But a very large number of meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere each DAY, amounting to more than a hundred tons of material.

Answer 4

Yes, it drops.

No, it's not. At least, not in terms of weight.

Using various hard-to-get metals/minerals/gases to get into space without returning them to earth can eventually be a problem (see The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress), but not in the near- or intermediate-future (say, 1000 years).

Answer 5

The only thing that should be sent into space is the junk in scrapyards and dumps.

As regards the weight of the world, em, um, yah, ok...well, see, some planets are like...heaver than earth, u know...and more cramped n stuff, so, chill

Answer 6

i'm going to deliver my husband's ex-spouse into deep area, yet could desire to ascertain there is extremely some room as a results of fact she is huge! easily, she virtually bankrupted her then-husband mutually as he replaced into in the defense force, and he could have been given the boot. Plus, she reported as our homestead one time while we've been married and left a message on the answering gadget! She's a large *itch! fortuitously, no childrens have been in contact.

Answer 7

its like taking a drop from the ocean, drinking it then start worrying about the sealevel dropping.

its so tiny in comparison noone would ever notice the difference