NASA To Investigate Mysterious 'Space Ball' 192
redletterdave writes "In mid-November, a hollow space ball fell from the sky and crashed into the earth in Namibia, the African nation situated above South Africa and west of Botswana and Zimbabwe. Authorities recovered the sphere in a grassy village north of Windhoek, the country's capital. The hollow ball, which appears to be made of 'two halves welded together,' has a rough surface, a 14-inch diameter and measures 43 inches around. The strange globe created a crater 13 inches deep and almost 12.5 feet wide, but was found almost 60 feet from the landing spot. Paul Ludik, the police forensics director investigating the case, says the dense ball weighs 13 pounds and is made of a 'metal alloy known to man.' NASA and the European Space Agency will both help investigate the strange occurrence."
SPACEBALLS? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SPACEBALLS? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SPACEBALLS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SPACEBALLS? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The Gods must be crazy ?
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This was, actually, my 1st thought. :)
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Actually, I wanted to post "It's New New Coke!"
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Nah, it's an Iranian space capsule with a test payload.
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that's what i was thinking too. that film taught me evolution more successfully than the catholic school system ever could.
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Yet it's sad that the author could assume we all knew what a space ball was, but had to provide directions to help us locate a country [wikipedia.org] that is larger than Texas. If only Mel Brooks had been a geography teacher.
No need to mention the Morons From Outer Space, then.
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What percentage of Americans do you think could identify New Mexico if handed an unlabeled map of the US?
Re:SPACEBALLS? (Score:4, Funny)
Some of them [npr.org] probably couldn't find it on a map of New Mexico.
Obligatory Simpsons Reference (Score:2)
" Whoa, slow down there maestro. There's a NEW Mexico? "
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Not many. When I tell people I used to live in NM, they ask where in Mexico I lived or how long I've been in the US. :/
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Same experience moving back to MD from NM for me. The weather man always stands in front of NM, so people really thought we had returned from Mexico...
Re:SPACEBALLS? (Score:5, Funny)
They've come for our AIR!
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They can never get through our air shield. I used the same combination on my luggage.
If it landed inside Italy ... (Score:3)
... it would end up in the pasta sauce, with tomato puree
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The Truman Show (Score:5, Funny)
I came here wondering why there were no references to the falling spotlight in The Truman Show. The fact that every such reference has been removed tells me everything I need to know.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SPACEBALLS? (Score:4, Funny)
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A lot of them are made by Diebold.
Re:SPACEBALLS? (Score:5, Funny)
That's what they want you to think.
Personally, I think it's a fuel tank from a rocket powered sleigh.
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Hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide is pretty powerful hypergolic rocket fuel you know; maybe the sleigh needs a little help in the desert during the summer time.
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People used to point at the moon and say that it was made of cheese. NASA still sent Apollo moon missions anyway.
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Damn, and it looked like I had a new science fiction story to write. [slashdot.org]
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Well that sucks, I was hoping for another Mythbusters mishap.
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Maybe they want to know WHICH satellite it came FROM? That may give them some useful information somehow.
Toxic waste (Score:2)
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Hydrazine is pretty bad but it isn't THAT bad. This isn't nerve gas. You would know if you inhaled even a small amount pretty rapidly by the running nose, sore throat, dizziness, seizures, etc...
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Is this that Happy Fun Ball I hear so much about?
Already solved (Score:5, Informative)
The Great Space Ball Mystery Has Been Solved [yahoo.com]
"For anyone wondering what it actually is, it's likely a 39-litre hydrazine bladder tank (based on its apparent size; there are also much larger hydrazine tanks)," he wrote. "They're used on unmanned rockets for satellite launches, which would explain why they're falling down in such a specific geographic footprint."
Re:Already solved (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for taking the fun out of this one. We could have all speculated about all kinds of random things that it "may" have been. You ruined my Christmas.
Re:Already solved (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for taking the fun out of this one. We could have all speculated about all kinds of random things that it "may" have been. You ruined my Christmas.
Don't panic! ...
Even though the mystery is "solved". We still can speculate. If we assume the official explaination and all evidence that supports it is a lie, then this could be anything: aliens, the CIA, time travelers, Steve Jobs' cybernetic brain, etc
Once again conpiracy theories save Chirstmas.
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Don't Panic and always have a towel :)
Re:Already solved (Score:5, Funny)
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Apotheker's are on the garden wall /#
Ballmer's have sixteen corners
And Whitman has no balls at all, gorblimey!
Re:Already solved (Score:4, Funny)
Pffft... "swamp gas", "weather balloon", " 39-litre hydrazine bladder tank" it's all the same story.
It's all a big conspiracy, man. Open your eyes! Stop drinking the kool-aid! The truth is out there!
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If it's 39 litres, the little green men (TM) have to be really little
--
BMO
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Noooo...one of the little green men lost one his nuts, it turns out they are really LARGE green men...with balls of steel...ready to subjugate all of mankind to their evil wishes why they have their way with our womenkind...sneaky devils...
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guess again, you'll soon not be so lucky. ask goatse man about the Large Green Men's orientation. I'd suggest a regimen of flexibility exercises starting with baseball bats and ending with fire hydrant squatting.
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The mystery may have been "solved" but now I have an idea of how I want to be 'buried in space'!!!
Re:Already solved (Score:5, Informative)
That's a pretty good guess. I would guess it was a pressure vessel of some kind from a Russian liquid ullage motor from an upper state, that have an unfortunate habit of exploding after a decade or so on-orbit.
One "nipple" is the liquid fill/drain, the other is the pressurant fill/release.
Brett
Re:Already solved (Score:4, Informative)
Liability? (Score:2)
Anybody knows what the liability is when parts of somebody's rocket land on somebody's home and kill someone?
This thread has quite a few examples of rocket components falling on houses, so it seems the risk is actually pretty high.
Do government representatives come and indemnify the victims?
And then, what's going to happen for private launches?
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Anybody knows what the liability is when parts of somebody's rocket land on somebody's home and kill someone?
Depends. If it's a Russian rocket, they send someone to "convince" you that you've been compensated. If it's a Chinese rocket, they tell the media you're part of the great capitalist plot to discredit their space program, then they ignore you. If it's an American rocket, you get sixty million dollars, followed by a 2 year investigation into faulty rocket designs, and the conspiracy theorists claim it was a secret experiment to test UFO technology.
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I think I've seen this guy on Reddit, too.
DG
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It's the left testicle of an alien. Or the right. Scientists haven't released their conclusion yet, but have not specifically ruled either option out.
Re:Already solved (Score:5, Funny)
So, you're suggesting it was of Extra Testicle origin?
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They're British litres, you dozy colonial twerp.
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I don't think so. it's a 39l bladder but net volume is 59l. I think if you do the math on that, you'll find a diameter of about 19 inches which is somewhat larger than the 14" quoted in the article summary. But I always sucked at math.
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I would have liked to have been able to guess "What's in the Wonder Ball."
Highly toxic and dangerously unstable Hydrazine gas.
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Mythbusters (Score:5, Funny)
Mythbusters were shooting in Africa?
Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate (Score:5, Funny)
Salyut 7/Kosmos 1686 Helium Tank (Score:1)
Or any other pressurized fuel/oxygen tank http://www.bimsociety.org/gallery/Salyut%207%20-%20Kosmos%201686%20Helium%20Tank/dirindex.html
Nibbler! (Score:1)
Nibbler has been worm-holed to our millennium!
...the African nation situated above South Africa (Score:2)
I wonder, how fast would this space ball need to be going in order to dig all the way through Namibia and land in South Africa?
Re:...the African nation situated above South Afri (Score:5, Funny)
Was it an African or European space ball?
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COPV (Score:5, Informative)
It's a COPV, see here [nasa.gov] or page 11 here [space.com]. The wrapping has probably shielded it enough during the atmospheric re-entry and then ripped away, or it could be from lower altitude flight. In fact NASA and ESA have already studied this object, and most responsible news outlets [discovery.com] have explained it along with the newsreport. The only real question is which mission or ship it is from, but unfortunately that might never be found out.
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Quick Googling now that I had time turned up this [activeboard.com]. It's the rocket body of the Soyuz SL-4 on TMA-22 mission that took US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to ISS on 16th November. Predicted re-entry location was in the sea south of Africa, but the predicted location isn't necessarily exact, plus there's several stages that would each break up across longer range. In any case it's certainly a good match for the vague "Mid November" reported.
Thanks for shearing (Score:5, Insightful)
14-inch diameter and measures 43
Thanks for sharing numbers that almost defy pi.
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It almost conforms to our earth bound geometry! I expect the discrepancy is due to a rift in the space/time continuum.
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It did say rough surface.
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It's so obvious what this is... (Score:5, Funny)
It's so obvious what this is, Wheatley [youtube.com] fell down from space...
It's obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the timing, it's obviously just a giant christmas ball which fell from a geostationary christmas tree put there by our future intergalactic cruisading space-christian overlords. It is almost 2012 afterall.
Phantasm (Score:2)
LoB
Call CERN. We found the Higgs Boson . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Created in the LEGO experiment at CERN in Denmark, it traveled through the political hole neutrino tunnel dug by the Italian education minister. It popped out of the other end of the tunnel in Namibia an exclaimed, "I knew I should have taken that left turn at Los Alamos in Albuquerque!" Theoretical mathematically inclined experimentally minded Gedanken physicists quickly solved the observed event by slapping a few new dimensions that we can't observe onto the creaking load in Grandma 's basket of string theories model.
Schrödinger's cat may or may not have been involved, and law enforcement sources will only state that they are in the state of considering the wacky cat as a "feline of interest" at the moment, as observed from their event horizon.
Meanwhile, an enraged God crawled out of the sea at Tokyo and is smashing the paper skyscrapers in the city, whilst searching for His particle. It seems that He wants it back. Japanese defense forces are deploying ludicrously tiny plastic models with firecrackers attached to their canons, in an effort to force God to get His hairy ass out of their city.
A military spokesmen stated that they were trying to taunt God into making a mistake, but weren't sure yet what that mistake could be.
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Los Alamos in Albuquerque
Los Alamos is in Los Alamos (go figure, right?). Sandia National Lab is in Albuquerque (50 to 75mi south of Los Alamos, rough guess...)
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Thanks for clearing that up. For a minute I wasn't sure what he was talking about.
Do not taunt Mysterious Space Ball (Score:5, Funny)
Mysterious Space Ball fell to earth in Namibia, presumably from outer space.
Authorities recovered the Mysterious Space Ball in a grassy village north of Windhoek, the country's capital.
Mysterious Space Ball, which appears to be made of 'two halves welded together,' has a rough surface, a 14-inch diameter and measures 43 inches around.
Mysterious Space Ball created a crater 13 inches deep and almost 12.5 feet wide, but was found almost 60 feet from the landing spot.
Mysterious Space Ball weighs 13 pounds and is made of a 'metal alloy known to man.'
NASA and the European Space Agency will both help investigate Mysterious Space Ball.
Do not taunt Mysterious Space Ball.
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The one who goes and checks it out, really has some balls :)
Get off my lawn (Score:2)
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Roman soldiers on alpha? What?
With apologies to ACDC: (Score:3)
"But NASA's got the spaciest balls of them all!"
it is made of a 'metal alloy known to man.' (Score:2)
If he knows what alloy it is, and it's a familiar one, what alloy is it?
That is so common, that its really not news (Score:2)
Its actually just sensationalism, as usual.
Look here [aero.org] at types and descriptions of reentered objects.
How many 'spheres' do you count?
Above? (Score:3, Informative)
"Namibia, the African nation situated above South Africa "
I think you mean "to the north of South Africa." Otherwise, the real story here is how Namibia came to be floating over South Africa.
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Otherwise, the real story here is how Namibia came to be floating over South Africa.
Yeah, saw that movie, I think it was called District 9.
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Pi (Score:2)
If I was a race of tiny alien invaders... (Score:2)
... I would camouflage my ship to look like common space junk too.
Of course it's a tank. (Score:5, Informative)
As someone else pointed out, most of the re-entered objects that are reasonably intact [aero.org] are spherical tanks. They're one of the few components of a spacecraft that are very solidly built. Most are titanium, or titanium wrapped in Kevlar, so they can take re-entry temperatures. Spheres have good re-entry aerodynamics. Nose cones have been hemispherical since the late 1950, after it was discovered that pointy noses look cool but don't work well. (See the X-3 Stilleto [wikipedia.org], an unsuccessful jet plane from 1952. Looks it was designed by George Lucas.)
So shake it up (Score:4, Funny)
"Reply hazy, try again "
Another satellite ball falls on Russia (Score:2)
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/man-escapes-as-satellite-piece-crashes-through-roof-160651 [ndtv.com]
A titanium ball of about five kg fell on to the roof of a house in Ordyn district.
metal alloy known to man (Score:2)
Clearly, not a native (English) speaker. In American English, that should read, 'metal alloy *not* known to man'.
Of course, that leaves us all wondering if there are some women who know about it (or not, if the original is correct).