Increase in spaceflight = more deadly falling wreckage

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http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/09/2 ... index.html

This private rocket failed and the payload it was carrying is, according to the people who launched it, "safely on the ground."

I know they're concerned about the payload being safe here, but what about the people on the ground?

Someone tell me how this disaster or the USS Columbia disaster couldn't have cost lives due to falling wreckage landing on people or crashing through homes and businesses. I know there were some pretty large, heavy pieces that fell down in Texas and other states after Columbia from looking at the pictures on the CNN coverage after that accident.

And, if you were walking around outside and a large chunk of wreckage came falling from the sky, could you recognize it in time to run away to safety?

If you give me your APPROXIMATE age and location,
I should be able to give you a rough idea and order of the things you should be worrying about, in terms of premature cessation of existence.

Space debris is nowhere.
People have been killed by spent bullets falling from the sky after "shooting in the air"
to celebrate weddings, elections etc. in certain parts of the world.

In the USA cars kill 100 a day... Every day.
(A twin towers every month!)

Worry about the sky (or bits thereof) falling when you've got the bigger risks covered.

The risk has to be on the order of 1 in 100,000,000 over your life of getting killed from falling space launch systems. Yeah I'm in Texas and I heard reports in my area of space
junk all over.

No way you could estimate the landing point of a fast object you would be just as likely to run into its paths.

The worry is IF you go up there. There's more debris (or rather, more dangerous debris) up there than will fall down here. I heard that cleaning up this space-crap is the basis for the anime "Planetes".

(Not McCoy! Almost any Doctor rather than McCoy!

Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee, Please!)

Yes, most stuff that is up there will burn up if it falls down, but it IS getting messy up there.
Have we lost any satellites to debris yet? It's only a matter of time...

(I happen to like Sylvester McCoy. Did you ever watch "Ghost Light", or "Curse of Fenric"? I like the other Doctors too, I just wanted to pick him as my avatar. So there.)

There, you happy, Emettman? It's Peter Davison now.

sob...my browser just refreshed automatically and i had 85% of my reply typed in!! !

just know this, there are a lot of ways to die, but spacecraft wreckage is the pink elephant on my mind right now.

I was going to mention plane crashes in my last post.

Here's a sobering website: http://www.celebratetoday.com/airceleb.html

The statistics for deaths in crashes of private plane, which I've seen but I don't forget the exact number, are appalling. the overall number of deaths in plane crashes doesn't seem that bad compared to automobile accidents, but that number includes the amount for commericial jets.

I would hate to overrule your perogative...
But most of McCoy was embarrassing. Widely regarded as the worst Who ever, (With the possible exception of a few of RTD's latest efforts, especially Love and Monsters)

And yes, Fenric was undoubtedly the best McCoy I've seen.


To keep loosely within the theme of danger, a little research I did after a recent flurry of stories...
For every person killed around Australia's coast by sharks, a hundred drown.

If you're scared of sharks, you should be TERRIFIED of water.

I am hydrophobic. Well, mildly so....