I’ve been known to say that Space Is Big. Mainly with regards to the unlikely chances of one’s satellite being hit by a piece of space junk. It is so Very Big that a void was recently discovered to be over a billion light years across! However, when the first recorded hit of a working satellite by a known piece of orbital debris was of a satellite close to my heart, I wondered at the limitations of statistics. Having not only created most of the mechanical design, from overall thoughts to detailed parts and instructions, I physically put a lot of it together, too. It was one of 28 launched satellites that I have – in most cases – been involved in from the initial twinkle, through to launch, to its last beep high up in space.
Those fun days of actually touching space hardware, and one-year projects from concept to launch, where have they gone? I suppose it depends on being in the right place at the right time: I recently talked to a colleague, who, after twenty years in the space business, had never actually seen a project through from the start to the final end of it. He had either joined the project halfway through, or had to take on more pressing tasks along the way.
The right place at the right time…now what was I saying about the likelihood of a collision in the vastness of space??
