In a message dated 3/25/00 7:47:28, John Clard wrote:
>According to NASA's figures, in a uncontrolled re-entry
>there is one chance in a thousand the debris will hit somebody
That's a ridiculously high probability. Human bodies don't cover 1/1000 of
the earth. Maybe they mean 1:1000 of hitting a structure?
>This solution gives insight into NASA's values and its idea of what the
future
>will be like. We must take measures to make sure there is not one chance in
>a thousand of killing somebody in a 100 years, especially for a reason as
trivial as
>scientific knowledge. Even in the year 2100 a re-entering 17 ton
non-radioactive
>satellite in a very predictable orbit will still be an awesome danger to our
powerless
>descendents.
Seems like a clean solution to the problem would be to put a "killer
satellite"
in orbit. The killer could change orbits and would carry a capture device
like some properly chosen cloth. The killer captures the out-of-control
target and drops both to controlled re-entry. One "killer" could insure many
such potential problems.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:06:23 MDT