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Satellite crash site, narrowing the probability
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by YankeeJim | September 23, 2011 at 03:59 am
1307 views | 16 Recommendations | 8 comments
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Tiburon Ferry
Ron Husk is a successful attorney, living in the San Francisco Bay area. It is Friday afternoon and he is leaving his office early to catch the first Ferry to Tiburon. Ron completed a big deal this week and needs a relaxing weekend.
He notices seals are back at the dock’s edge. He has mixed feelings about that because they get on peoples’ boats and docks and make a mess. If they are here, they may be at his dock too.
His mind wanders as he thinks about taking his wife to dinner at Angelinos’ tonight, a little something special.
The ferry arrives and Ron makes his way to the upper deck to feel the breeze. It is unusually sunny this late afternoon without fog.
The engine rumbles and Ron relaxes as the boat skims across the bay.
From nowhere, without warning, a chunk of something slices through Ron’s fine suit and all of his thoughts about dinner and the week end and everything for that matter have ended.
The man sitting next to Ron exclaimed, “Damned space debris!” as he was just reading that NASA hedged its predictions.
“NASA hedges satellite-crash predictions
By Joel Achenbach, Published: September 22
Sometime late Friday — possibly during happy hour, to use a conveniently ambiguous time period, but maybe deep into the evening — a tumbling NASA satellite is expected to enter the upper atmosphere, partially melt, disintegrate and spray the planet with charred debris.
NASA, faced with the inherent uncertainties of space-junk dynamics, continued late Thursday to offer a fuzzy prediction about when and where the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) will crash.
But this has proved to be a squishy situation with enormous, globe-spanning margins of error.
UARS appeared to be on a trajectory to splash into the desolate South Pacific sometime Friday night, according to a map published by the Aerospace Corp., which uses Air Force tracking data. The map indicated that if the satellite crashed just 20 to 25 minutes later, it would be over North America.
This was a significant change from a previous projection by the same organization, which showed UARS coming in several hours earlier and reentering the atmosphere just off the west coast of South America.
UARS circles the planet in a little more than 11 / 2 hours. A small change in the reentry time will result in thousands of miles of difference in the location.
On Thursday, the satellite was barely more than 100 miles up, steadily losing speed and altitude. When it’s about 42 miles above the surface, it will probably break up as the aluminum frame melts away, said Bill Ailor, an Aerospace Corp. engineer who has been monitoring the satellite.
Ailor said fuel tanks often explode during reentry. NASA expects UARS to break into about 100 pieces that will fireball across the sky, visible for hundreds of miles. About 26 of those pieces should survive reentry and crash to the surface, with the largest chunk weighing more than 300 pounds.
But most of the planet’s surface is open ocean, and it’s unlikely that anyone will be hurt, according to NASA, which puts the odds of even one human being, somewhere, being injured at 1 in 3,200.”"
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (8)
at 10:54 on September 23rd, 2011
So interesting this happens the same day that Homeland Security is scaring little schoolchildren in Denver with disaster "simulations" -- armed soldiers, sounds of explosions, evacuation drills. Could this satellite scare be part of a huge psyop to induce fear and compliance?
at 15:09 on September 23rd, 2011
Only for people so stupidly paranoid they think gravity could be defied.
Perhaps you missed that "what comes up, must come down" thingy?
In any case your post could be called the same thing- planting the idea in people's heads that the uncertainty of the inevitable decay of orbit of a satellite is the government conspiring against the people. Something tells me you'd also complain if they kept us in the dark about it.
at 06:32 on September 24th, 2011
Since NASA said thousands of these things are crashing all of the time, I bet you are right that they coordinated this crash with advance planning that included psyop treatment on Denver children.
at 15:20 on September 23rd, 2011
ANYhoo given the current state of the economy your lead in scenario could have used a more humble character. I can only imagine what kind of "big deal" this guy completed but it was probably supporting a client's hostile takeover of a competing company making a better product, dotting the i's and crossing the t's legally so hundreds could be put out of work.
The rest of us saw friday come and go hoping we either got our paychecks, they didn't bounce, or there wasn't an eviction notice on the door when we got home from another day burning shoe leather looking for work.
I'm envisioning a direct hit on our fat cat attorney and lovin' it.
Just think, if that 300lb chunk streaks down and instead hits a school bus, how many jobs will be created? Quite a few.
I'm all heart.
at 03:44 on September 24th, 2011
You are my hero today...ha, ha, ha.
at 04:07 on September 24th, 2011
I did an experiment over several days and introduced different scenarios: Ron Husk, attorney, Paula Smallwood, working girl, Bob Johnson, at home eating cereal and some other treatment all on the same subject. It was Tiburon and San Francisco that brought out the City Lights of readers.
at 04:57 on September 26th, 2011
I have a relative who lived in Tiburon, IIRC it was a cousin of my father?
When I was a child growing up in San Jose we used to go to their house on New Year's eve, did so for at least a few years, all I remember is they put on a pretty good "shindig" and had a house that looked about average when you pulled up on the street out front but was about four stories high, with bay views, on the back side as it was built on a hill.
Oh and I got to play the drums. badly, but on a full kit. When you're six years old at a party full of adults, that's a party all by itself.
I'm pretty sure Tiburon doesn't distribute food stamps and doesn't have a homeless outreach program. Who knows though, and I don't think anyone thought it would get this depressing, and we're nowhere near the bottom yet.
When we get there, get used to it, it's permament barring some kind of ponzischeme.2 like Perry sending his secretary of state to make a secret deal with the Chinese to enslave their entire population to work and send the proceeds to america and all we have to do is give them monopoly money and it takes 30 years for the world to figure it out.
Nixon/Kissinger/Saudis/1973 redux, you know the one. God we were bastards, the G6 must have been livid.
(FWIW Tiburon gets its own fantasy tri-oval superspeedway in the PS2 game "NASCAR Thunder 2004" at over 3 miles long it dwarfs Talladega and sees racing at 235mph- and curiously you turn right!)
at 14:42 on October 8th, 2011
I appreciate that description.