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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
by taylorfinley 4y ago
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.)
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- femto 4y agoThat'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.
- tgv 4y agoI think 100 can be unsafe. It'll go fast, it's heavy, and hard. Things will fly around.
- pvg 4y agoThe distribution of people is not uniform over the potential impact area, which is, as you mention yourself, not the whole surface of the earth. The error bars on this are too huge even by napkin standards, for this to work as an estimate.
- _moof 4y agoOrbital inclination is 52°. That leaves about 400 million km^2.
- adastra22 4y agoYou’re off by a few orders of magnitude.
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- Gordonjcp 4y agoThat's assuming it comes straight down. Given that most people are somewhere around one to two metres tall, if it came in at a shallow angle it could ruin hundreds of people's day.
- RealityVoid 4y agoI think the shallow angle is unlikely since all horizont speed is not going to be compensated by anything, once it's gone by air friction, it's gone. Whereas vertical speed is helped by gravity. It of course depends on the initial velocity, but I doubt it's high enough for it to be an issue.