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Space NASA Idle

Satellite Piece Crashes Through Man's Roof 121

Posted by samzenpus from the return-to-sender dept.
PolygamousRanchKid writes "A Siberian resident miraculously escaped serious injury or even death when a fragment of a Russian communication satellite crashed through the roof of his house. A Meridian satellite that was launched Friday from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia on board a Soyuz-2 carrier rocket crashed near the Siberian city of Tobolsk minutes after lift-off. A titanium ball of about five kg fell on to the roof of a house in Ordyn district."
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Satellite Piece Crashes Through Man's Roof More

Satellite Piece Crashes Through Man's Roof

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  • How does that work?

  • Reading this, all I could think was that I feel bad for the Nasa astronauts. This is their only option for getting to the ISS now.

  • Does he get to keep it? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tyrannosaur ( 2485772 ) on Sunday December 25, 2011 @08:14PM (#38491006)

    So I read the article twice- are they going to fix his house for him? Does his insurance cover "terminal velocity" damages? I vote he gets to keep the 5kg titanium ball at least - a souvenir from the great russian space program :)

    • Re:Does he get to keep it? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nyeerrmm ( 940927 ) on Sunday December 25, 2011 @09:46PM (#38491378)

      My renters insurance and at least specifies that it covers damage from 'aircraft and spacecraft'.

      So... possibly yes?

    • Does his insurance cover...

      1. It's in Siberia - you think he has insurance?

      2. Even if he did, read YOUR homeowners / renters insurance - "acts of God" are not covered.

      3. "Acts of God" are defined as anything your insurance company doesn't want to pay for, i.e. everything.

      Insurance: You have to have it, but it's virtually worthless.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Ethanol-fueled ( 1125189 )
        Here in the U.S.(and within a few miles of where I was working when it happened!) a military pilot student bailed from his malfunctioning F-18, [examiner.com] leaving it crashing into 2 houses and almost singlehandedly wiping out a family.

        The military offered them an undisclosed sum, probably a few million bucks, and they said, "Fuck you, we want 56 million, see your asses in court." And they'll probably get at least half of that considering the string of errors led to the crash.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cstacy ( 534252 )

        1. It's in Siberia - you think he has insurance?

        I imagine he bought it from "Peggy".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 ) *

        2. Even if he did, read YOUR homeowners / renters insurance - "acts of God" are not covered.

        Getting hit by debris fallen from a man made satellite does not fall under "acts of God"; it's a man-made disaster, and the responsible party is the organization that launched the satellite and failed to contain debris -- the crashing of debris is an entirely forseeable reslult of launching a satelite, and the crashing debris is a result of human error.

        An act of god is when you have an earthquake,or lightning s

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You claim to have read the article twice, yet it is in the article.

    • So I read the article twice- are they going to fix his house for him?

      The article I read said the district administration was inspecting the damage, and would be compensating Mr. Krivoruchenko for the damage to his house.

      SOURCE [bbc.co.uk]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by WetCat ( 558132 )

      From the local media - the local administration has provided this guy materials, and he already has fixed the roof himself.
      Nevertheless, seems like he is now trying to sue Roskosmos for moral damages.

  • There is an important piece of information missing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lsh123 ( 852261 ) on Sunday December 25, 2011 @08:17PM (#38491016)
    The house is located on Cosmonauts Street (no, this is not a joke)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Elbereth ( 58257 )

      Granted, that's not ironic... but it sure is amusingly coincidental.

    • Re:There is an important piece of information miss (Score:5, Informative)

      by Reservoir Penguin ( 611789 ) on Sunday December 25, 2011 @11:55PM (#38491926)
      Some corrections since it fell near where I live and a lot of people got to observe the fiery trail we thought it was a plane actually)

      1) It crashed in Ordyn district of Novosibirsk region, not Tobolsk which is to the west.
      2) There is a Cosmanauts street in nearly every Russian town and from what I hear fragments were discovered all over Ordynsk, so the irony is a bit misplaced here.
      I'm too concerned about apparently poor quality control with recent launches. I agree that it's most likely due to loss of experience due to aging workforce.
    • From what time I have spent in Russia I get the impression that nearly every town there has a street by that name.

  • First paragraph from the article:

    The Meridian communications satellite failed to reach orbit yesterday due to a failure with its Soyuz rocket, in the latest setback for a Russian space program which has now lost over half a dozen satellites in the past year.

    That's unusual... from what I know most Russian-built stuff is designed to have bits fall off, and then carry on as if nothing happened.

    Hmm a "sphere" - maybe another fuel tank like in that Namibia incident?

  • This isn't miraculous. It's merely fortunate. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AuraSeer ( 409950 ) on Sunday December 25, 2011 @08:33PM (#38491076)

    "Miraculous" should be reserved for things that are difficult to believe, or at least wildly improbable. If the satellite fell out of the sky and hit the guy in the face, but he walked off unscathed, then you could say he "miraculously escaped injury."

    But being missed by the debris is not a miracle. It just demonstrates how small a target a person is.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Wait, I’m supposed to accept skepticism from someone with an account name of “AuraSeer”?

      • Of course, based exclusively upon his (her?) account name. I mean, that's the only rational basis for agreeing or disagreeing with someone, right? After all, objectively the weighing the veracity (or lack thereof) of a person's comments makes no sense whatsoever, right? </sarc>

      • Perhaps I picked the name because I used to get migraines [wikipedia.org]. Those can come with focal neurological symptoms called "aura," ranging from nausea and vertigo all the way up to hallucinations.

        Or maybe I'm a big hippy.

        Or else I created the username fifteen years ago, it seeemed to sound good at the time, and I no longer remember the exact reason.

        What's the difference?

        • I feel your pain. Pharmboy isn't about pharmaceuticals, it is just that 20 years ago, "Ph == f" was k3wl and I like living a more rural existence. That gets misread all the time. Besides, my drugs of choice of natural plants or fermented, not pharmaceuticals.

    • Given how unlikely it is for a piece of space debris to hit any particular target, I would count this person as being extraordinarily unlucky to come even close to getting hit. It's the same fallacy at work when someone gets into an accident and survives. They are counted as being lucky to survive, when the person was in fact extremely unlucky to be in an accident in the first place.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rossdee ( 243626 )

        "It's the same fallacy at work when someone gets into an accident and survives. They are counted as being lucky to survive, when the person was in fact extremely unlucky to be in an accident in the first place."

        In this case yes, since the accident has nothing to do with what he was doing at the time (as opposed to most auto accidents where the fault lies with the driver (distracted or under the influence etc)

        I know Siberia is a big place, but how far was this from Tunguska?

      • It's the same fallacy at work when someone gets into an accident and survives. They are counted as being lucky to survive, when the person was in fact extremely unlucky to be in an accident in the first place.

        What fallacy? You're talking about two different events, the unlucky event is the accident AND the lucky one is surviving to tell the tale. Both can be true statements for the same person in the same accident (assuming luck exists).

      • Oooookaaaay, we have a Mr. 'optimist' here on our hands :)

        To the question of: "is it half full or half empty", he always answered: "I never wanted water anyway."

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by nirgle ( 554262 )
      Yeah, because right before hitting Publish, most people go back over their article to make sure every word is well thought out so as not to offend the linguistically sensitive of the world.

    • Agreed. This guy wasn't saved by a miracle, just by statistics. Even in the smallest of homes, a falling object is more likely to hit unoccupied space than a person, even if it's quite crowded.

      For that matter, it doesn't even sound like the object penetrated the roof; the story says it "crashed into the roof" and the owner had to go outside before he saw the damage.

    • I was thinking the same thing. Using "miraculous" in the sense of "extremely unlikely to happen", the miracle is that this piece hit a house at all in an underpopulated region such as Siberia, not that it missed the people living in the house.

  • Because someone will say it (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 25, 2011 @08:34PM (#38491080)

    It Soviet Russia, satellite crashes YOU!

  • Donnie Darkov (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 25, 2011 @08:35PM (#38491082)

    Did he get a warning from Frankovsky the giant rabbit? :)

  • /. Needs to watch the submissions a little closer. The article clearly states that the sphere hit his roof, not crashed through it.
    /. = good
    /. + sensationalism = bad

  • What's wrong with their space program? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And is anything less reliable than a Russian rocket at the moment?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The past was built on "Gulag" science and some German technicians not found by the US/UK/French teams.
      If the closed Soviet science city performed, you got good food and the joy of been on the short list for an apartment.
      If not - much worse job, Gulag or death.
      Now all Russia has is ageing Soviet era teams and young people trained on imported western computer tech trying to pick over what was not lost or sold off in the 1990's.
      Nothing really worked that well, in the past it was just all airbrushed out.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      Yes, our economy.

  • Satellite spy on you!

  • In Soviet Russia... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Megane ( 129182 )

    YOU find satellite!

    (Damn kids trying to do ISR memes these days, get off my lawn.)

  • Was he a subversive? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Or did they miss :P

  • If this is related to the "space ball" that landed in Namibia.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That is now two balls that have dropped from the sky, we are now officially being tea-bagged by the universe.

  • When questioned about this metal ball hurtling through an unsuspecting person's house, Adam Savage would only reply with: 'No comment'.

  • When reached for comment.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Mythbusters crew said "It wasn't us this time!"

  • yesterday the namibia object, today this one... lots of object falling... london bridge is ok but the freaking sky litterally is litterally falling down

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Donwulff ( 27374 )

      While it's not quite "literally", add to that this [youtube.com], seen over much of central Europe on the Christmas eve. Curiously (and echoing somewhat the confusion on the other recent space-debris reports), news-outlets are following officials quoting it's either "99.9% certainly a meteorite" or the story about that having been the failed Meridian launch. Based on information from USSTRATCOM (ex NORAD) [blogspot.com] this was re-entry of the rocket stage from the successful ISS mission. Yet I don't think they've ever been quite this

  • Soyuz vs Mythbusters (Score:5, Funny)

    by mbone ( 558574 ) on Sunday December 25, 2011 @10:50PM (#38491628)

    The Russians, not having Mythbusters [washingtonpost.com], have to resort to expensive rockets to mess up local neighborhoods.

    • the bizarre contrast in the way these stories were reported.

      mythbusters:

      crazy experiment goes wrong, smashes through two houses and a car.

      russian satellite:

      incompetent russians almost kill man with space debris.

      ----------

      difference? mythbusters actually almost killed several people. the russians only almost killed one guy.

  • First space balls, now this?!

    • First space balls, now this?!

      A titanium ball of about five kg fell on to the roof of a house in Ordyn district.

      No, no, this is still space balls.

  • Commercial lift services have to be reliable (Score:4, Informative)

    by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Sunday December 25, 2011 @11:27PM (#38491784) Homepage Journal

    With the age of their lift system, you'd think the Russians would have the kinks ironed out by now. I can understand something new like their Mars mission failing, but five commercial launches in a year?

    Those payloads are far too expensive and time consuming to trust to a lift provider with such a poor track record.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      Hey its no more reliable than the US programs where each attempt was delayed for at least a month as they ran around like chickens with their heads cut off looking for leaky gaskets and flappy bits of foam dangling from their 1970's rusty old beaters.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by msobkow ( 48369 )

        Better to delay a month re-checking everything than to blow up the whole shipment. NASA may have often been late, but they didn't lose very many launches as a result.

        It'll be interesting to see how some of the newer private lift companies fare -- is their rethinking and updated engineering going to result in more reliable delivery, or more failures?

        I'm also curious to see how the Chinese fare as they step forth into space -- so far they're doing pretty good.

  • Euronews footage of the sphere and damage [euronews.net]. Not much to look at, but I for one was curious to see it. "Pics or it didn't happen" and all that.

  • empoverished area?
    pawn shop type loan deposit for titanium to fund lawsuit against company to fix house

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