Comments on: Spy sat to come home… not too secretly

By: Pete from Australia

Pete from Australia — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 10:07:35 +0000

[...] a Soviet satellite came down in Australia a few years ago.

You might be thinking of SkyLab, an early US space station. Chunks of it fell around various farms and small country towns in Western Australia.

By: Brie

Brie — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:30:54 +0000

Does anyone know when this is suppose to happen???

By: Totenhawk

Totenhawk — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:28:43 +0000

Ice Station Zebra .

If this Spysat does land in north America , Get ready to meet your friendly local SEAL recovery team.
The classified nature of this bird is Top Secret at the least.

By: Doc

Doc — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:59:17 +0000

8. Average American Citizen Option: Huh? Satellite? Will I still be able to hear about Brittany?

By: Edward Carney

Edward Carney — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:04:59 +0000

“the odds of hitting land are 30% at best.”

Isn’t it more correct to say that the odds against a random piece of debris striking land is .7/.3 or 2.33 to 1 against? That is, the favorable outcome is 2.33 times more probable than the unfavorable outcome. This is a little clearer if we try to guess the day that it will come down. If the day of the satellite’s final re-entry is a random variable, then the probability of the day being Sunday is 1/7. The odds that it will be a Sunday are 6 to 1 against.

I’m sure that things get much more complicated with the field of debris produced by a falling satellite, especially given the various kinds of material, some of high density, some of low. Another issue is that the satellite is out of control, but the orbit when launched might have been set up to optimize fuel use by launching the satellite to track mostly over land or mostly over ocean, depending on the desired targets.

By: Barton Paul Levenson

Barton Paul Levenson — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:22:59 +0000

QD has an important point to make. It’s the interference of the state with the free market that makes 2007 TU24 so dangerous. Why not give everyone a tax cut dependent on safe passage of the asteroid? Then people will have more incentive not to be hit by it.

By: Spysat reentry « David Kirkpatrick

Spysat reentry « David Kirkpatrick — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:57:47 +0000

[...] NASA, spysat, TU24 asteroid — davidkirkpatrick @ 12:55 pm Yowza. A US spy satellite is coming home the hard way in February or March. What makes this event exciting (not the good type of exciting) is we’ve [...]