Editing 2264: Satellite

{{comic
| number    = 2264
| date      = February 5, 2020
| title     = Satellite
| image     = satellite.png
| titletext = If you're going to let it burn up, make sure it happens over the deep end of the bathtub and not any populated parts of the house!
}}

==Explanation==
This comic humorously compares the relationship between humans and {{w|satellites}} to the relationship between humans and {{w|pet}}s. "He followed me home, can we keep him?" is a stock phrase said by children pleading with their parents to keep a "found" animal as a pet. The stock response is to admonish the child to look after the pet's needs, especially the less fun ones, like cleaning up after the pet. In this comic, [[Jill]] wishes to adopt an "abandoned" satellite, but rather than being asked to clean up after the satellite's waste, she is lectured by her parents on how to properly discard it once it stops working. This would be like saying "you have to promise to bury the dog in the backyard when it dies, not leave its corpse to decompose in the dining room like the last one," which is not how most pet-adoption conversations go.{{Citation needed}} A similar theme of humans being orbited by fun-sized space objects is featured in [[1300: Galilean Moons]].

A {{w|graveyard orbit}} is an orbit far away from operational satellites. Graveyard orbits are used when a satellite is far enough away from the Earth that de-orbiting it into Earth's atmosphere is too expensive to be practical. The most widely used graveyard orbit is approximately 300 km above {{w|geostationary orbit}}; a satellite at the end of its life will briefly accelerate to move further away from Earth, so Jill's parents refer to "boosting" the satellite into a graveyard orbit.

{{w|Kessler syndrome}} is a proposed scenario in which satellite collision(s) produce many pieces of orbiting space junk, which then hit other satellites and create even more pieces of junk, which hit more satellites, and so on. In this scenario Earth becomes surrounded by so much man-made debris that the risk of a collision makes space activities functionally impossible, without advanced techniques being employed to avoid, destroy, or neutralize the debris. Apparently, Jill has caused this scenario before in her parents' home, requiring extensive cleanup of the dining room and making it unusable for weeks. Kessler syndrome was the premise of the movie ''{{w|Gravity_(2013_film)|Gravity}}'', where the collision of two satellites produces pieces of shrapnel that go on to tear apart other satellites including the {{w|International Space Station}} and a {{w|Space Shuttle}}.  A variation of Kessler syndrome was the focus of the first part of the {{w|Neal Stephenson}} novel ''{{w|Seveneves}}'', where cascading collisions of fragments of the moon led to natural and artificial debris fields around the Earth.

The title text is more advice from Jill's parents. They tell her that if she is going to let her satellite reenter the atmosphere and burn up, she should do it above the deep end of the bathtub. This echoes how satellites in orbit can be purposefully de-orbited and are usually planned so that any debris that isn't fully destroyed lands in the ocean and does not pose a safety risk.  When it is possible, satellites are generally directed towards the South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area, commonly known as the "{{w|spacecraft graveyard}}", to land over a thousand miles away from any populated landmass.

Two defunct satellites [https://www.space.com/no-satellite-crash-of-space-junk-iras-ggse-4.html had a near miss] on January 29, 2020, the week before this comic strip was published, possibly serving as the inspiration for this strip. This is becoming more of an issue, especially in Low Earth Orbit, as more and more satellites are built, and old satellites become defunct.

An alternative reading is that the characters are actually planet-sized creatures around which the discarded debris of primitive lifeforms, carelessly sent into space, orbits. Saturn happens to have a density less than that of water, so it could conceivably float in a suitably sized bathtub.

==Transcript==
:[Jill is facing Cueball and Megan. A small satellite orbits her, indicated by a tilted circle around her at about neck height. The satellite is between her and her parents.]
:Jill: Hey, look, I found a satellite! Can I keep it? Please?
:Cueball: Sweetie, no.
:Megan: Put it back where you found it.

:[Zoom in on Jill who looks straight out of the panel, the satellite is passing by her ear with the circle going behind her. The satellite is detailed in this zoom in. There is a central main part of the satellite, almost square, with a small protrusion at the "top" and two small lines (antennae) at the "bottom." Two solar panels extend on either side, each longer than the central part.]
:Jill: But I think it was abandoned!
:Jill: And it's so cute!
:Jill: Please?
:Jill: ''Pleeeease?''

:[Back to all three again, Jill has her arms raised above her head. The satellite is beneath her head.]
:Megan: Fine. But you have to promise to boost it to a graveyard orbit when it stops working. Don't just leave it drifting around.
:Jill: Yaaaay!

:[Same setting as in the first panel, so Jill has lowered her arms.]
:Cueball: We're serious. I am '''''not''''' cleaning up after Kessler syndrome again.
:Megan: We couldn't use the dining room for ''weeks!''
:Jill: I promise, I promise.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Space probes]]