61–70 of 75 posts
A water splashdown is the highest probability. But I think even with the 52 degree envelope, Russia is still probably the largest landmass in that envelope? So I take ironic pleasure knowing it’s more likely to smack back into Russia than any other country. (I’m making an educated assumption about the geography, but could be wrong)
52 degrees pretty well lines up with Russia's southern border. Virtually no overlap.
When the Soviet Union wanted to launch something to space, it did it as close to the equator as possible. That way you get the most boost from the spinning earth. (If you're not using a polar orbit.) So they used a southern point of Soviet union in Tyuratam in Kazakhstan, better known as Baikonur.
An interesting note right at the end, so in case anyone missed it: this same launch is believed to be the source of 5 titanium "spaceballs" that fell onto New Zealand in 1972. While the odds are low of any space debris hitting land, it was the photo in this article that surprised me - I was thinking billiard ball size debris, not this - http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/4542804/Government-report-o...
That article mentions them dangling a wrist watch over the space ball to see if it was radioactive. How would this work?
Whatever the case, sure, it's certainly not a reliable safety test. But it was wise to keep this thing away from people. RTG's do have highly dangerous materials like polonium or strontium and there have been accidents.
An interesting note right at the end, so in case anyone missed it: this same launch is believed to be the source of 5 titanium "spaceballs" that fell onto New Zealand in 1972. While the odds are low of any space debris hitting land, it was the photo in this article that surprised me - I was thinking billiard ball size debris, not this - http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/4542804/Government-report-o...
Wild coincidence or destiny? I’m in the space industry. I’ve wanted to visit NZ for ever. Here now, finally. 3 days ago I toured the Ashburton museum and saw this ball. Now this gets posted on HN which I’ve been ignoring for the last year.
I'm trying to get my head around what sort of damage an object of this size travelling at terminal velocity would do.
Napkin math: earth's surface area is ~510 million square kilometers. The lander is described as fitting in a 1-meter protective shell. So we have a roughly 1 in 510 billion chance of standing in the lucky spot. (This of course would only be accurate if all square meters of the earth's surface were equally likely to be hit. Not the case since the lander appears to be orbiting the equator.)
That's an English billion (10^12), given that there are a million square metres to the square km? Mind you, I wouldn't want to be standing within 18m of where it lands, so either definition of "billion" does make sense.
Is this the origin of the name for the film SPACEBALLS?
The movie came out 15 years later and I doubt anyone remembered or knew about titanium balls falling on New Zealand. Spaceballs was always meant to be a direct parody of Star Wars. I remember from that time people were more freaked out about Skylab falling down to earth--there were novelty t-shirts with a big target and "Skylab target" printed on them, all the late night TV hosts joked about it, etc. Skylab falling b…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems unlikely that terminal velocity of a bullet would be terribly dangerous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire lists a few deaths. Given the number of people who celebrate with gunfire, it's indeed not terribly dangerous overall. Nevertheless, "it's still your fault if it kills someone."
So I'm not completely wrong. Of course, if you fire a bullet non-vertically, it's much more likely to have a lethal velocity when it returns.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The posterior probability, given that you've already found a very rare piece of space debris, would have been high. https://xkcd.com/795/ (By the way, there's an documented instance [0] mentioned in the sibling comments. The hazard is much worse than you'd think: the space reactor didn't simply fall in one piece, but left a trail of fragments 600 km long, some of which were lethally radioactive. It's pretty lucky thi…
Yes but those dangers are the dangers of radioactive material - it's naturally 'hot', much of it also chemically toxic, etc. It's not core-at-criticality-that-murders-you-as-you-stand-next-to-it type of dangerous. I think that's still an essentially hypothetical danger of nuclear space junk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire lists a few deaths. Given the number of people who celebrate with gunfire, it's indeed not terribly dangerous overall. Nevertheless, "it's still your fault if it kills someone."
"They found that while bullets traveling on a perfectly vertical trajectory tumble on the way down, creating turbulence that reduces terminal velocity below that which would kill, it was very difficult to fire a bullet in this near-ideal vertical trajectory. In practice, bullets were likely to remain spin-stabilized on a ballistic trajectory and fall at a potentially lethal terminal velocity." So I'm not completely w…
It was meant to highlight russellbeattie's propositional logic ("if it kills someone" then "it's still your fault"). I agree with you that it's "not terribly dangerous"[1]. Your comment seemed to have omitted the premise, so I wanted highlight how it was a non-empty set. [2]
[1] It's also not terribly dangerous to drive without a seat belt on either. I don't advise people do so.
[2] "Firing a bullet into the air" does not mean it must have time to slow to terminal velocity, nor is a bullet hitting a body the only way to kill. (See "Twenty-three people were electrocuted after celebratory gunfire brought down a power cable".)