Women, stars and screwdrivers

...a dispatch from bewilderness

The word “computer” almost exclusively refers to electronic devices — but it used to be a human job. For centuries — in fact beginning in the early 1600s — “computer” meant “one who computes,” particularly in astronomy.

The role of computing, or, rather, of “being” computers, was mostly filled by women. Although the work required a great deal of skill and made major contributions to the field of astronomy, computing was considered clerical work.

In the 1870s, the Harvard College Observatory hired several dozen women who compared photographic plates of the night sky and painstakingly measured the differences in stars’ positions. They were called computers, not astronomers or scientists.

Among them were Williamina Fleming, who pioneered classifying stars by temperature; Annie Jump Cannon, who created the stellar classification system that scientists still use today; and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who discovered about half of all variable stars (meaning their brightness changes when viewed from Earth) known at the time.

The lunar surface now contains 200 tons of trash, including miscellaneous objects like a feather, golf balls, a toothbrush and boots. Then there’s the clutter that orbits the earth. This includes expired spacecraft, spent rocket boosters, and items discarded by astronauts such as gloves and screwdrivers.

Astronauts drop things. Discarded rocket parts carrying residual fuel accidentally explode, creating many smaller pieces traveling faster than bullets. Even particles smaller than a penny, traveling at 22,000 miles per hour, can ruin a critical satellite or threaten the International Space Station.

In fact, tens of thousands of pieces of large space junk -- some as large as a school bus -- are orbiting the earth because companies like SpaceX have surrounded the planet with trash. It’s out of control, as in not controlled by anyone.

So far, they have fallen on places as varied as Saskatchewan, New South Wales and Florida. Fyi, nine out of 10 of these objects travel at about 17,000 miles per hour. Some burn up in space. some burn up as they arrive or on their way down. Some just keep orbiting. At speeds 10 times faster than a bullet. That means a fleck of paint could puncture a spacesuit.