Sun Nov 10 11:04:57 CET 2024

I have been a fan of the building of the International Space Station since the beginning when the first
module "Zvezda" was lofted and docked to the American node 1.  I remember well when "Shep" and Sergey
Krikalev were the crew #1.  Though I must admit, I have vested interest in the ISS.  I helped build it.

Between the years 1995 and 1996 I worked from March onwards to Labour day at a small Aerospace firm called
TFI Aerospace in Mississauga, ON, Canada.  TFI specialized in making fasteners which is a technical term
for screws for the aerospace industry.  They also did T-Fasteners for the American truck industry, if it
holds up your diesel tanks it's probably made there.

I'm not exactly sure what modules of the space station, being told that these fasteners would be used there,
ended up, but I suspect it's in the P[1-X] truss section.  The section holding the solar panels.  In retrospect
I'm glad I did a good job and put my 100% into this work making these screws the best I could.

It's possible that these fasteners in low earth orbit are my life-line today even though I'm in screaming pain
sometimes.

As far as I understand it, NASA and SpaceX are devising plans to deorbit and burn up the ISS, soonish.  This is
a bad plan.  A Canadian study show that Aluminium burning up in the Atmosphere is introducing Chlorine into the
Stratosphere in a two stage process.  This chlorine breaks down the Ozone layer, and cannot be removed.  It's
not even as simple as letting the Ozone hole recover as happened in the late 80's.  The breakdown is near the
inclination of the ISS which is slated to come down over an Ocean.  This would introduce a non-stoppable O3
(ozone) hole in the non-polar region, affecting hundreds of millions of humans to UV rays which are a source
of skin cancer.  So you see we cannot simple trash the station.  It has to be either disassembled piece by
piece or raised to a so-called "grave yard" orbit.  Wish you luck either way I believe the reason I'm not
beating wheelchair prone just yet is because of these fasteners in low earth orbit.

Oh yes the same goes for Starlink, you have to bring this crap down nicely not burn it up.

From Sin City / EU-US Gulaghs (yes they exist),

-pjp