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You would have to have some pretty bad luck to be hit by space junk like that. Not saying it's a good thing or anything, just that the odds are pretty astronomi
by bhhaskin 3y ago
You would have to have some pretty bad luck to be hit by space junk like that. Not saying it's a good thing or anything, just that the odds are pretty astronomical.
- the_real_cher 3y agoGood point. The chances are truly out of this world.
- iJohnDoe 3y agoYet possible as proven here. Hitting a home is bad enough. The chances will probably increase the more space debris is handled in this way. Also, tell the family they just have “bad luck”.
- kylecazar 3y agoThey're making space puns
- dmix 3y agoHomes are much larger than people and people are always in their homes. And even if you were home it’s not like it would 100% penetrate a floor you’re on or wall or whatever.
- nier 3y agoThe linked Twitter post above contains at least one picture of a fully penetrated floor.
- ornornor 3y agoUS houses are notoriously not as well built as in other places in the world. Where I live at the moment for instance is concrete all around, including the roof. I would be surprised if this falling on it would do anything at all and surely wouldn’t penetrate.
- Vecr 3y agoAre you sure about that? It's not literally Rods From the Gods but it's a high density high heat resistance metal chunk, going very fast.
- ornornor 3y agoI’m not certain, no. But I’d be curious to see. In my building, each floor is around 20–30 cm thick concrete.
- tutfbhuf 2y agoIf a barrier can stop a .50 cal BMG, then it should be sufficient to stop space debris. 20-30 cm of concrete should be enough.
- ben_w 2y agoI have no idea how fast it was going when it hit, but as it is more than 10x the mass of a 50 cal, I wouldn't rely on the assumption that protection from the latter is also protection from the former.
- itsoktocry 2y ago>US houses are notoriously not as well built as in other places in the world. I bet you could count on one hand the number of places in the world that, on average, have higher building standards than the US. >Where I live at the moment for instance is concrete all around, including the roof. Is the ability to stop space junk your measure here? Are we building homes or bunkers?
- cesarb 2y agoWhere I live, the common construction for houses is to have reinforced concrete slabs as the floors and ceilings, with the walls being brick except for the load-bearing reinforced concrete columns. The ceramic tiled roof (when there's one) goes above the reinforced concrete ceiling. More than once, I've read about accidents in which Brazilians fell (sometimes to their death) through the ceiling of a USA home, and that's because we simply don't expect the ceiling to be so fragile; our intuition is that the ceiling is as strong as the floor, and that we can walk normally over it. To those from countries with a similar building culture, USA houses feel really fragile; for instance, what do you mean you can punch a hole in a room's internal wall? We expect these walls to be made of brick.
- chipdart 3y ago> Also, tell the family they just have “bad luck”. It's not wrong, though. The Earth's surface is slightly over 500 million km². Let's say that something landing within a 10m radius of you represents a hit. That radius is about 314 m², or 0,000314 km² If my math doesn't fail me, if we partition the globe into discrete areas equivalent to that 10m radius, the odds of something landing on your area would be around 1 in 10^12.
- xnorswap 2y agoThat's the chance of one specific person being hit. But I think you'd want to calculate the chance of any one person being "hit", which is roughly ten billion times higher than that, and uncomfortably likely (if people were actually 10m wide).
- ykonstant 2y ago>(if people were actually 10m wide). Apparently, we're working on that.
- tetris11 2y agodoesnt the orbit shadow vastly reduce surface area to a few thin overlapping strips?
- ang_cire 2y agoExcept that neither human nor satellite distribution is even across the global surface, and we actually tend to put our satellites above the human-populated areas so that they can service those humans. Including the nigh-unpopulated polar regions would massively skew the probabilities, for instance, especially since most satellites aren't in polar orbits either. It's still an infinitesimally small likelihood of being hit by one, of course.
- scotty79 2y ago> The chances will probably increase the more space debris is handled in this way. The more stuff falls the more the models will be fine tuned to figure out how to re-enter stuff to completely burn it.
- stevenjgarner 2y agoAccording to Clark R. Chapman (2007) [1], the "Odds of Dying in the U.S. from Selected Causes in a Human Lifetime" have Regional Asteroid/Comet Impact as 1 in 1,600,000, while the Odds of winning the PowerBall are 1 in 195,249,054. [1] https://www2.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.htm https://www2.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts....
- pfdietz 2y agoI think the odds of dying from asteroid impact come from global collapse of agriculture, not the thing falling near you.
- itishappy 2y agoMost asteroids aren't the Earth ending kind. > Every day, Earth is bombarded with more than 100 tons of dust and sand-sized particles. https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/asteroid-fast-facts/ https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/asteroid-fast-fa...
- pfdietz 2y agoYes, but an asteroid doesn't have to be earth-ending to ruin agriculture for a year. This is similar to the civilizational threat of volcanic supereruptions.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fsckboy 2y ago> Good point. The chances are truly out of this world. all the chances that are out of this world are chances of not being hit. problem is, fully all the chances of being hit are on this world. "if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all." - Cousin Joe
- whycome 3y agoThe odds are pretty terrestrial at that point. What's the smallest meteorite that would still be "penetrative" to a human body? Eg not falling space dust and also taking into account terminal velocities of smaller particles.
- bagels 3y agoPeople have been hit by meteorites (which of course are more plentiful currently): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/only-person-ever-h https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/only-person-ever-h...
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoFixed your link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/only-person-ever-hit-meteorite-real-trouble-began-later-180961238/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/only-person-ever-h... Also, FWIW, that article says only a single person has ever been recorded as being hit by a meteorite.
- gchamonlive 2y agoThe more junk the higher the probabilities of an accident. It doesn't have to reach two digits probability for it to start to be a problem. Densely populated areas + high likelihood of space debris could lead to unacceptable risks. Although I agree the actual danger is in the orbits and with deployed satellites.
- bluGill 2y agoMost junk burns up in the atmosphere and so is harmless. Large or dense things are a big problem though. Satellites need to be designed with respect to how they break up on reentry.
- ben_w 2y agoDensely populated areas probably reduce the risk for objects this size, as skyscrapers and subways are harder to go through vertically (when starting from space) than bungalows and cars.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- codedokode 2y agoThere are 8 billions people on Earth though.