Re: NASA Issues new Safety Guidelines

From: Doug... (dvandorn1_at_NOSPAM.mn.rr.com)
Date: 03/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 04:58:10 GMT

In article <Xns9622C7B32E984jrfrank@216.196.97.131>, jrfrank@ibm-pc.borg
says...
>
> <snip>
>
> Ideally you'd want the entry groundtrack to be over
> sparsely-populated land so that you could recover the debris without
> endangering the public - after all, they're third parties that never signed
> onto this particular risk. But there's fairly few deorbit opportunities
> that result in such a groundtrack.

OK -- Columbia's ground track during STS-107's entry passed over
moderately heavily populated areas, and indeed it broke up over a major
city. Some pretty large pieces fell in and around urban and suburban
areas.

And not one piece hit anyone, out of tens of tons of debris that
survived and hit the ground. No one was poisoned by leaking fuel tanks.
Not one person on the ground was hurt by falling debris.

I don't even recall hearing about any dogs or cats, or even pet birds,
being harmed by Columbia's debris.

I can't even recall anyone *ever* being killed or injured by falling
space debris. And hundreds of tons of debris have fallen from orbit
over the years.

Truthfully, isn't it a little paranoid to worry about the extremely
unlikely possibility of debris injuring people in the now even-more-
unlikely event of an entry failure?

Or was the lack of any personal injury to people on the ground from
falling Columbia debris an example of extreme luck and a very unlikely
pattern of debris fall that spared anyone from being struck by debris
falling into urban and suburban population centers? After all, we've
only seen one large vehicle disintegrate over populated land, and one
event isn't a very good statistical sample.

In other words, was the lack of ground injuries atypical? Or do we even
know enough to say whether it was or not? 

-- 
"The problem isn't that there are so   |   Doug Van Dorn
many fools; it's that lightning isn't  |   dvandorn1@NOSPAM.mn.rr.com
distributed right."  -Mark Twain

Relevant Pages

  • Re: NASA Issues new Safety Guidelines
    ... >> Ideally you'd want the entry groundtrack to be over ... > survived and hit the ground. ... Not one person on the ground was hurt by falling debris. ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)
  • Re: NASA Issues new Safety Guidelines
    ... >> Ideally you'd want the entry groundtrack to be over ... > survived and hit the ground. ... Not one person on the ground was hurt by falling debris. ...
    (sci.space.history)
  • Re: NASA Issues new Safety Guidelines
    ... >> Ideally you'd want the entry groundtrack to be over ... > survived and hit the ground. ... Not one person on the ground was hurt by falling debris. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: NASA Issues new Safety Guidelines
    ... > sparsely-populated land so that you could recover the debris without ... OK -- Columbia's ground track during STS-107's entry passed over ... Not one person on the ground was hurt by falling debris. ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)
  • Re: NASA Issues new Safety Guidelines
    ... > sparsely-populated land so that you could recover the debris without ... OK -- Columbia's ground track during STS-107's entry passed over ... Not one person on the ground was hurt by falling debris. ...
    (sci.space.history)