Re: Mir
Orbital mechanics are weird. You can't just throw stuff at the planet and expect it to hit. 45 minutes later, rather than being on its way to fiery destruction, it'll be *above* you.
Draw planet Earth in the middle of a piece of paper, and draw a big circle around it to represent the ISS's orbit.
Imagine you throw something from your space station when you're to the left of the planet. You're following the circle of the orbit, and whatever you throw out is also following this circle. So you're adding a little rightwards motion to the object, towards the planet. That's good, it'll carry on heading that way, yes?
You're a long way from the planet, so the object won't reenter just yet, and continues on its orbit, just slightly further away from you. Now you're a quarter of the way round your orbit, near the top of the piece of paper. The additional motion you gave the object was to the right, and laws of motion being what they are, is still to the right. So now from your point of view is now moving ahead of you, and not towards Earth.
Another quarter of the way around your orbit, you and the object are now to the right of Earth. The object is still moving to the right relative to your orbit, so now it appears to be in front and moving above you, away from the Earth. As you orbit around, this dance continues.
So chuck something out of the ISS, and it'll move away from you, but stay in pretty much the same orbit.
It's hard to hit the Earth. It's even harder to hit the Sun.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
