{"id":462,"date":"2008-01-26T21:36:18","date_gmt":"2008-01-27T01:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/archives\/462"},"modified":"2008-01-26T21:36:18","modified_gmt":"2008-01-27T01:36:18","slug":"safe-from-falling-satellites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/2008\/01\/26\/safe-from-falling-satellites\/","title":{"rendered":"Safe From Falling Satellites?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsvine.com\/_news\/2008\/01\/26\/1257139-disabled-spy-satellite-threatens-earth\">U.S. military spy satellite the size of a school bus is falling<\/a>. Without power, the controllers on the ground no longer can ensure it comes down in a controlled manner into the ocean. It could hit the ground in a month. At present, its unknown when or where it might hit.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The largest uncontrolled re-entry by a NASA spacecraft was Skylab, the 78-ton abandoned space station that fell from orbit in 1979. Its debris dropped harmlessly into the Indian Ocean and across a remote section of western Australia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This quote got me thinking&#8230; <strong>Assuming this object comes down anywhere on the surface of the Earth, what are the odds of it hitting 1)  a major city, 2) a populated area, 3) anyone, or 4) harmless to any human life?<\/strong> It seems to me the highest odds are on #4. Consider: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ocean\">71% of the surface of the Earth is covered by water<\/a>. So the only risk is it hitting a ship. The odds of #4 would be at the lowest 65-70%. People tend to congregate in groups up to tens of millions. Even farmland makes up only 40% of the land. Probably populated areas would not even get us to 50% of the land surface area.<\/p>\n<p>Probably since the odds are so low anyone will be hit is the reason for the lack of &#8220;OMG we&#8217;re going to die!&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A U.S. military spy satellite the size of a school bus is falling. Without power, the controllers on the ground no longer can ensure it comes down in a controlled manner into the ocean. It could hit the ground in a month. At present, its unknown when or where it might hit. The largest uncontrolled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[216,214,215,522],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-earth","tag-nasa","tag-orbit","tag-wikipedia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rUBW-7s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}