22. "Astropollution Hits Home" Although it no longer makes
headlines nor the six o'clock news, about twice a month somebody
launches something into space. NASA's current agenda alone calls
for domestic communications satellites, weather satellites, new
military communications and surveillance satellites, a satellite
to test the magnetosphere, one to study propulsion principles,
experimental TV broadcast satellites, ocean surface monitoring
satellites, one to measure the shape of the earth, some to study
atmospheric radiation, and at least one satellite to study
satellites. And this is only for So what's the problem? The
problem, very simply, is that, as Newton found, what goes up
must come down. That issue has never been publicly raised until
1978 with the Skylab discussion. The objects that we, and
others, continue to shoot into space are slowly sinking to
earth, as the NASA officials have known. The smaller ones do
disintegrate as they fall through the earth's atmosphere, but
the larger ones do not: As of 1