30 January 2013
Posted in
Space Junk 3D
The 2008 Disney-Pixar blockbuster WALL-E is a comical and suprisingly sweet tale of a small trash-gathering robot accidentally abandoned on earth. Although this animated film is seemingly innocent, it gives an extremely accurate picture of some of the dangers in our future.
In WALL-E, the earth is surrounded by a dense field of orbiting junk. This is actually a very real issue—it is estimated that Lower Earth Orbit contains more than 6,000 tons of satellites and debris, and less than 20 percent is actually operational!
Although the spaceships in the movie have no issue plowing through the sattelites and debris, this act is extremely dangerous. In orbit, these objects are moving at approximately 4.5 miles per second, which means even a tiny item can do serious damage if a spaceship collides with it. A space shuttle once wound up with a half-inch dent in one of its sturdy windows because of a collision with a paint chip one-eighth of an inch across!
You can learn all about this problem at the Orlando Science Center in Space Junk 3D, now showing daily in the newly renovated Digital Adventure Theatre! Experience mind-boggling collisions and soar to the stunning depths of Meteor Crater for an unprecedented view of our increasingly crowded orbits, all with our state-of-the-art 4K digital projection and 7.1 surround sound! This is a fully submersive experience that is sure to please.
