[meteorite-list] Space junk - marine life - shame on NASA

[Chris Peterson]

There is established international law dealing with legal liability for 
damage or injury caused by space debris reaching the ground. All space 
missions (in the U.S., at least) consider the likelihood of material 
surviving reentry. It's a question of statistics, and the chance of damage 
is almost always extremely small. In rare cases where something very large 
is being returned, it is usual for the object to be scuttled under 
controlled circumstances, to ensure reentry over the ocean. This 
refrigeration unit did not require a semi-controlled reentry because it was 
very unlikely enough material would survive to the ground to matter, 
regardless of where the decay occurred.

Of course, if an object should land on a school, it's easy to say how much 
cheaper it would have been to return it. But that logic only applies if you 
return everything, and that would be far, far more expensive than the cost 
of a single object hitting a school. In this case, given the size of debris 
remaining (if any), it's likely that something hitting a roof would just 
knock off some shingles and slide down.

I'll bet your risk is much greater from being hit by something falling off 
an airplane than being hit by something reentering from space. And neither 
risk is high enough to spend much time worrying about!

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg Catterton" <star_wars_collector at yahoo.com>
To: "Chris Peterson" <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>
Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Space junk - marine life - shame on NASA


>
> It is the first thing I was aware of, until reading more about it.
> I know what ifs are really meaningless, however... if it had landed on a 
> school full of kids, Im sure the cost of returning to earth would have 
> been very cheap compared to the loss of life.
> If it had impacted on a house or other private property, would NASA have 
> been liable?
>
> The replies about this have been really good and informative, Thanks to 
> all for your input.
>
> Greg