NASA Faces First-Ever Claim for Space Debris Damage 67
A Florida homeowner has filed an unprecedented claim against NASA for damages caused by space debris that crashed through his roof in March. Alejandro Otero is seeking over $80,000 for property damage and other costs after a 1.6-pound metal object from the International Space Station struck his Naples home. NASA confirmed the debris was part of a battery pack jettisoned in 2021. Legal experts, cited by ArsTechnica in the linked story, say the agency's response could set a precedent for future cases involving space debris damage.
list the object on ebay start price $85,000 (Score:2)
list the object on ebay start price $85,000.
the added $5000 should cover fees
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That could wind up costing you a lot more. Legally, space debris that falls to earth remains the property of the original owner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Re:list the object on ebay start price $85,000 (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if this will end up working like maritime law.
In maritime law there is a distinction between flotsam -- goods which are accidentally released from a ship due to mishap like sinking -- and jetsam -- goods which are intentionally jettisoned, e.g. to save the ship that's takingon water from sinking. When someone else salvages flotsam the original owner has a claim to it. Failure to report salvage of flotsam can get you prosecuted for "theft by finding". But in the case of jetsam, the debris is considered abandoned property and it's finder's keepers.
So space debris that was intentionally deorbited with the intention for it to burn up or fall into the ocean and never be recovered would be analogous to jetsam. Space debris caused by accidents like a loss of control or failure to reach orbit would be more like flotsam.
It seems to me you can't have it both ways. If you want to claim the debris as your own property, then you should be responsible for the damage that property caused by your actions. If you want to claim that the damage occured after you abandoned the property, you shouldn't be able to claim it as property. Of course if the debris is government property, any claims are likely to be foreclosed by sovereign immunity.
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Your analysis seems right, but I'm personally not going to test that distinction, if I happen to find some space debris!
Pay up quickly NASA (Score:2)
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Now, when it happens to kill somebody, managing de-orbits is going to get a lot more complicated. Especially if it's an international incident as it is likely to be.
Sovereign Immunity (Score:3)
US residents are authorized under FTCA to breach sovereign immunity to pursue torts against the federal government; the act itself bars actions emanating from foreign locations. So while this guy could sue, if you were elsewhere, sovereign immunity would bar it, and it would be a diplomatic issue.
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So if you think something is wrong, it doesn't exist? Interesting theory. Let's see how it stands up in court.
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Wow, you sound sane. Good luck with treatment.
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Substituting for a long list of citations... [congress.gov]
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Rejecting reality is insane. I'm sure the insane think those who aren't are dumb and servile.
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Re:Sovereign Immunity (Score:4, Informative)
Sovereign immunity is a fake doctrine with no actual legal basis other than judges making shit up. You can't claim something to be law when there's no actual law saying it. Especially when it flies in the face of the whole concept of law. Nobody is supposed to be above it, so "immunity" based on status is nonsense.
I can't tell if you're uninformed or trying to be funny. In most places, including the U.S., this applies to the Government, not a person.
From sovereign immunity [cornell.edu]:
Definition:
The sovereign immunity refers to the fact that the government cannot be sued without its consent.
Overview:
Sovereign immunity was derived from British common law doctrine based on the idea that the King could do no wrong.
In the United States, sovereign immunity typically applies to the federal government and state government, but not to municipalities. Federal and state governments, however, have the ability to waive their sovereign immunity. The federal government did this when it passed the Federal Tort Claims Act, which waived federal immunity for numerous types of torts claims.
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Re: Sovereign Immunity (Score:2)
Does the USA or Israel have the right to defend itself?
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Oh, gods, a sovereign citizen, next you'll be telling us that we don't have to pay taxes and some gobbledygook about 'Admiralty Law'.
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In your opinion. Unfortunately there is a large pile of case law and tradition that says otherwise.
You're looking at this wrong, you're applying logic to the practice of law. Law is pretty much a religion all by itself, consistence and reason only apply when convenient to the practitioners.
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The contract is not between the people and some specially blessed ruling class, but between the people period, of which government officials are merely a subset. Their authority must defer to the laws from which they derive it. You cannot claim to be exercising an office of law by using it contrary to that law.
My logic is not some arbitrary path of thought. You literally
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some specially blessed ruling class
What do you call lawyers and corporations, if not the 'ruling class'? There's theory, and then there's reality, you can only live successfully in the latter.
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If you insist that mere power is sufficient authority; if you insist that someone's temporary practical ability to assert their will on you makes their actions legitimate government policy, even though they fly in the face of law; then you must concede to the tenets of fascism. You must concede that violence is not only sufficient authority, but literally all authority necessary over you.
Anyone willing to commit worse atrocities than you to im
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Well, you're using the word 'fascism' wrong, but most people do so I won't argue the point.
But no, I *don't* think that, "Anyone willing to commit worse atrocities than you to impose their will has the "right" to do so." On the other hand, I recognize that they have the ABILITY to do so, which is considerably more important. You can insist that you have all the "rights" that you can conceive of, but if the biggest bully around disagrees then good luck to you attempting to practice them. We can only attem
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Either the authority of courts comes from their possession of power OR it comes from the law. They themselves insist it comes from the law, so merely hold them to the standards of their own rhetoric. And if we do that, we must deny the validity of legal positions based on the temporary and correctable possession of a court by egotists who
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No they aren't. Corporations do as well. US Supreme Court has defined the idea of "Corporate Personhood" from 1819 to 2013 in various cases.
A general definition of course is:
"Corporate personhood or juridical personality is the legal notion that a juridical person such as a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons. In most countries, a corporation has the same
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Aside from the fact that the First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees citizens the right to petition their government for redress, there's also Article IV, which states the following:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
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Sovereign immunity is a fake doctrine with no actual legal basis other than judges making shit up. You can't claim something to be law when there's no actual law saying it. Especially when it flies in the face of the whole concept of law. Nobody is supposed to be above it, so "immunity" based on status is nonsense.
Being clueless is not a virtue.
Sovereign immunity is actually extremely logical. To wit: When you sue the Federal Government, you have to sue it in Federal Court. What is Federal Court? It's a division of one of the three branches of the Federal Government. i.e. you are asking the government to find itself guilty of some misdeed / action and punish itself via a fine or some other remedy.
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Then shut the fuck up.
Nope. That's fascism. You're asking people who have pledged loyalty to something above government to admit the truth about a government's flaws. If they fail to do so, they have failed the test of their own authority, and therefore the authority of their ruling itself.
You have not thought this through.
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Nope. That's fascism. You're asking people who have pledged loyalty to something above government to admit the truth about a government's flaws. If they fail to do so, they have failed the test of their own authority, and therefore the authority of their ruling itself.
I'm the clueless one? You don't even know what fascism is, you fucking retard. You're probably one of those assholes who calls everything they don't like "racism".
The federal government, via legislation, has allowed itself to be sued. Most (all?) states also have similar laws on the books. So what the fuck are you going on about?
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The federal government hasn't "allowed" a damn thing. The people have the right to sue our government because it's our fucking property, not our master.
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No, asshole. Fascism is private ownership of the means of production but total government control of it.
THAT IS FASCISM.
Thanks for confirming my earlier statement.
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Pretending there is some magical collective entity that comes into existence when actions are taken by a group rather than an individual is, at very best, authoritarian.
Authoritarian? Are you for fucking real? What the hell have you contributed to society that you think you have some sort of what? Sovereign Citizen bullshit? You've done nothing in the greater context of events. Don't like how we (yes, we, insofar as the collective "we" who have actually contributed some measure of blood or sweat to the maintenance and furthering of this particular form of government) are doing shit? Then pack up your fucking bags and hit the road. I served in the US military in an activ
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I wasn't aware we were demanding up-front payment for human rights and default honesty, but I don't think your silver-spooned and jackbooted fellow-travelers would fare well under that standard.
Nothing like that. I'm as obligated to my fellow citizens as they are to me, under a social contract known - to people who at least graduated middle school - as a "constitution."
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When you sue the Federal Government, you have to sue it in Federal Court.
When you sue which branch of government? Typically, government policy is carried out by the executive branch. So that's who you sue. The courts are independent of the executive branch. So, no problem.
Sovereign immunity derives from governments where there is a sovereign monarch, who cannot be tried or punished. We have no such monarch, so the government carving out some sort of immunity for themselves is questionable.
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Now, when it happens to kill somebody, managing de-orbits is going to get a lot more complicated. Especially if it's an international incident as it is likely to be.
On the plus side, if it's a toilet seat, they'll make a documentary [wikipedia.org] about it.
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Exactly. You can either pay it now, or pay it later plus legal fees and such.
You guys made the decision to jettison this thing, thinking it would burn up on re-entry to an insignificant cloud of high-energy plasma and freed atoms. It did not. Therefore you are liable.
The only thing that makes any of this novel is that it happened above the Karman line, and the low probability.
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Exactly. If they try to create a precedent that it's not their fault, it won't go well.
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Pretty much my thought.
1. Fix the guy's house (pay for the repairs)
2. Send somebody fairly important to render a personal apology.
3. Make a vague statement about "examining processes, amending procedures" to help avoid the problem of space junk landing on people's houses, uncomfortably close to relatives. DO NOT make a joke about better aim around mother in laws.
At ~$80k, it's literally cheaper to just write the check now.
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1. Fix the guy's house (pay for the repairs)
The damage to the roof was negligible.
Most of the $80k is for "emotional and mental anguish".
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What do you want to bet that the guy's brother-in-law is a lawyer and is handling the case?
Re: Pay up quickly NASA (Score:2)
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That should be covered under his homeowner's insurance. He's just trying to soak the government for some extra money. He probably has a relative who's an attorney who said, "I bet we can make some money on this."
Re: Pay up quickly NASA (Score:3)
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Whats the difference between someone driving by his house and throwing a brick that goes through his roof, and someone throwing trash away in space and it going through his roof? Seems like his insurance should have covered it and leave it to them to recoup their costs vs NASA.
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Actually my homeowner's insurance would end up paying unless negligence on the part of the neighbor was proved (tree was clearly dead, rotten, leaning), and they would only bother trying to prove negligence if the amount was large enough that it was worth paying the lawyers. In the case of your average Florida home they'd have to destroy the entire roof and probably do some structural damage.
height not important (Score:3)
If NASA dropped something on his house from a crane or a plane then NASA would be liable. This does not change when the height goes way up, NASA still dropped something on his house, intentional or not.
Dumb, bad publicity (Score:4, Insightful)
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Assuming the object belonged to NASA in the first place.
The ISS is a collaboration between several countries, and a US citizen stands pretty much no chance of getting any compensation from Roscosmos.
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a US citizen stands pretty much no chance of getting any compensation from Roscosmos.
Not true. The Space Liability Convention [wikipedia.org] was signed by all spacefaring countries more than 50 years ago.
If Roscosmos had caused the damage, payment would have been assured.
Likewise, if NASA debris hit a house in Russia.
The problem in this case is that American debris hit an American house, and there isn't any law or precedent to handle that.
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His homeowner's insurance should cover the roof damage, this bozo is just trying to soak the government for whatever else he can get. They're probably asking for $80,000 because the lawyer figured they'll pay that without quibbling. Even if they didn't have insurance an entire new roof would cost less than $20,000 here in Washington and a lot less than that in Florida.
Re: Dumb, bad publicity (Score:2)
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The problem is, they tried. They have a claims form that was filled out. The problem is, the damage is in excess of what the claims form allows (around $25,000, they're claiming $80K in damages).
Thus the claim needs to go higher up in the chain to approve - i.e., the Attorney General has to app
There is a precedent (Score:2)
The then-Soviet Union paid several million Canadian dollars in compensation and costs for cleaning up most of the radioactive debris from the satellite's nuclear reactor.
There are also terms in the international Outer Space Treaty to cover such damaging events. The treaty might still be in effect.
Sod's law. (Score:2)
You do your best to build something which can survive re-entry and it delaminates, melts or vaporises, throw a battery casually into the atmosphere and the stupid thing sails through all the plasma and hypersonic atmospheric forces intact enough to aim for some dude's roof and wreck it
Informations about the damages? (Score:2)
Does the homeowner have any evidences of these damages? Was there one debri or many debris?