Space Litter To Hit Earth Tomorrow 443
A refrigerator-sized tank of toxic ammonia, tossed from the international space station last year, is expected to hit earth tomorrow afternoon or evening. The 1,400-pound object was deliberately jettisoned — by hand — from the ISS's robot arm in July 2007. Since the time of re-entry is uncertain, so is the location. "NASA expects up to 15 pieces of the tank to survive the searing hot temperatures of re-entry, ranging in size from about 1.4 ounces (40 grams) to nearly 40 pounds (17.5 kilograms). ... [T]he largest pieces could slam into the Earth's surface at about 100 mph (161 kph). ...'If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground Monday morning, I would hope they wouldn't get too close to it,' [a NASA spokesman] said."
Bad Precedent (Score:1, Insightful)
Kid: "Mom, roll down the window so I can toss my dirty Kleenex out."
Mom: "No, son, that is not polite."
Kid: "But NASA is dumping a big barrel of ammonia stuff back to Earth, and it may kill somebody."
Collectors beware (Score:3, Insightful)
If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground Monday morning, I would hope they wouldn't get too close to it
Yes, I hope they don't, but in reality if someone encounters a piece of space trash, and see it for space trash, they will pick it up thinking it might be worth something.
Re:Landfall projection? (Score:4, Insightful)
Natural space junk of similar mass hits the Earth all the time. When was the last time you heard of anyone getting killed by a meteorite?
Re:Could/Should we push all the junk back at earth (Score:1, Insightful)
A laser which would simply annihilate the junk would be admittedly cooler
It would be cooler, but then you're violating the law of conservation of mass*, which is pretty hard to do with just a laser.
(*yes, I know it's conservation of mass and energy, and that you can convert mass into energy in a nuclear reaction)
TFA Problems (Score:3, Insightful)
"A refrigerator-sized tank of toxic ammonia, tossed from the international space station last year, is expected to hit earth tomorrow afternoon or evening."
Written for maximum impact at the expense of accuracy. Frinstance: Toxic ammonia vs. what? Inert, organism-friendly ammonia? The modifier is as useful as adding "wet" to water.
The distinction would matter if the tank were going to land intact. As TFA states it'll break up during reentry. Any ammonia inside will be explosively released due to reentry heat increasing the pressure, the fact that the first break will destroy any aerodynamic stability and rip the tank and components to shreds nearly instantly, and/or the ammonia being sucked out through the first breach by the low pressure at high altitude and the vacuum created by the air speed.
But that makes the spokescritter's point re: finding pieces moot and the comment mostly FUD. Any pieces will be chunks of metal, possibly with sharp edges but most likely rounded by reentry heat.
To their credit, unlike many previous articles, TFA makes the attempt to indicate the probability of sea vs. land impact rather than run with the FUD hype of the latter alone.
Re:"toxic ammonia"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Could/Should we push all the junk back at earth (Score:2, Insightful)
Try saying that after a 17kg chunk hits you on the head at 100mph!
Strange warning. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why the concern? By the time it's on the ground, it's stopped, all the ammonia has boiled off, and if it's still hot, it'll cool off pretty quickly? What's the danger? Is there some green goop on it that will turn you into the blob?
Re:Cloudy (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell that to the tens (hundred?) of thousands (?) who die in traffic each year.
Re:Cloudy (Score:3, Insightful)
The chances of me dying from one drivers driving each day is probably similar to that of said debris. More control yes but also more likely to be in an area where I happen to be (in a city among the streets.)
But most people drive many times per year, and there are lot of drivers, why worry about random piece of space junk hitting earth? The likehood of that affecting me is virtually zero. People take much bigger risks than that each and every day, which was my point.
Sure it may be neglectful of Nasa to just throw it out there, but people do things which have a much bigger chance of having an impact on me or whoever every day and in most cases no-one cares.
Re:Landfall projection? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've wondered about this before. A good percentage of those six billion people are in places where it might not be reported if one of them were killed by something falling from above... how sure are we that it hasn't happened once or twice before and we just never heard about it?
Re:"toxic ammonia"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cloudy (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an old saying that no matter how good a driver you are, you have to worry about all the other idiots on the road. However you still have some degree of control; I can to a certain extent spot crap drivers and give them a wide berth, or be mentally prepared for their craptitude which can shave a litle off the reaction time when I need to take evasive action.
If a lump of random spacecrap is going to land on you, it's going to land on you. There's sod all you can do about it. I doubt the prediction is timely and accurate enough that you could get the heck away or shelter in a basement when it hits.
Re:TFA Problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Well in part, it may simply be a warning. Most people do not know all the chemicals out there and may not know ammonia is toxic. Also, just because a chemical is present, doesn't mean it is present in a dangerous state. I keep an explosive alkali metal and a toxic gas in my kitchen. However, they are in the form of NaCl, table salt, and thus are harmless. Noting that it is toxic is a way of indicating that it is either in a free state or in a dangerous compound. However you can very well have ammonia in a harmless salt as well.
Re:Cloudy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cloudy (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's say that anyone within four square meters of where this thing hits is going to be mighty unhappy. And assuming some overlap, let's say there are 10,000,000,000 square meters of "target" area. The Earth's surface area is about 511,000,000,000,000 square meters. So about 50,000 to 1 that one or more people get KOed by this thing.
Note: chances of some silly error on my part: 50-50.