On 9/23/11 You Have a 1 in 3200 Chance of Being Killed By Space Debris???

Nuff said.
I'll be inside my steel armored bullet proof house when ELENIN's "debris" aka space ship parts come crashing down.
I'll be waiting with my Spiker when the Annunaki come down and kill us on the 27th.

Originally posted by tauristercus
One chance in 3200 of being hit by ANY piece of existing space junk ? Really ??

Hmmmm,so not 1 in 2000 or 1 in 8500 or 1 in 4235 ... or any other estimate but a fairly accurate estimation of 1 in 3200. I'd just love to see the mathematical "reasoning" behind such a precise figure - assuming there is any.

Sometimes I'm almost certain they pull these (and similar) statistical "values" out of a hat at random !

Not quite, though the values are rarely as neat as what you see / hear on the news. I don't have access to the tables used for this particular calculation, but the general form is something along these lines:

The very general area of impact is known, for any given time. Once they get a general time frame for the impact, they have a 'box' on the Earth's surface to work with. Quick example: If we can figure out (based on rate of orbital decay and general path data) that an object is going to come down 'somewhere in Europe' at about noon GMT, I don't have to worry over much about North or South America, the Far East, or Africa. I can draw a box around Europe and say "somewhere in here", and ignore the rest of the map.

The population density of just about every place on Earth is a known number as well. Taking my box (from above) and applying average population density figures, I now know that there are "X" people per square kilometer in the box.

Once I have those two numbers, I can take the likely 'danger space' from the impact, do some quick division, and come up with a 1-in-whatever chance that my danger space overlaps one or more humans in my projected impact box. Since "whatever" in the above fraction is rarely a nice, round number, it usually gets rounded for presentation to the media.

So...the number isn't really a 'concrete' one...it's a statistical estimate, which means that it has a 60% chance of not being a pure 'pulled out of my anatomy' number.

reply to post by CLPrime

How about this:
If there were 3,200 UARS reentering, one person on Earth would be hit by debris. For sure.

Originally posted by MissPoovey
abovetopsecret

This would be called Space Junk, and it is incredible. While the MSM reports it about as often as Fukishima.

Here is a picture I posted on another thread (not mine but a thread about Space Debis/Junk), see above link.

Is all that debri from stuff we have put up there in the past 60 or so years? Is what I'm seeing, that there seems to be a lot more very close to earth, true?

If that picture is acurate that is some scary stuff. It looks more like we're trapped inside, or smothering ourselves to death. Or is it our field of defense? It's pretty dense, are we being invaded?

WTF!

reply to post by Signals


meh - you have to die sometime , from something

the question i am wondring is :

if it comes down in my vicinity - what are the chances that i will be able to salvage a peice

Originally posted by windword
Is what I'm seeing, that there seems to be a lot more very close to earth, true?

Yes, more stuff close to earth.
There are two most common places for a satellite to be
1. In the geostationary orbit used by such things as satellite TV. Where the satellite is in a "fixed" position so that a fixed satellite dish can look at it all the time. About 35,786 km (22,000 mi) Thats the big outer ring in your picture.
2. In "Low Earth Orbit". Much more common and used by things that just need to be in space but dont have any reason to be far away. The ISS, all (former) Space Shuttle missions, the Hubble space telescope, the spy satellites and other ground observing stuff, and UARS. This is just a few hundred km or miles and is the white cloud covering the earth.

Rarer is the stuff in between.

Originally posted by alfa1

Originally posted by Signals
Am I reading this right?

No, you're not reading it right.
The thread title...On 9/23/11 You Have a 1 in 3200 Chance of Being Killed By Space Debris... is wrong.

A NASA risk assessment places the odds of a human casualty at 1:3200. means that there is that risk of *anyone at all* on earth being killed.
But there are 7 billion people, so for you to be that particular specific unlucky one is a 1 in 7 billion chance.
Mutiplied by the improbability of 3200,
so
YOUR
specific individual chance of being killed, is a tiny 1 in 22400 billion.

well done

except i wonder was nasa's 1 in 3200 actually based on 7 billion or a particular trajectory population in the path?

Originally posted by RadeonGFXRHumanGTXisAlien
I'll be inside my steel armored bullet proof house when ELENIN's "debris" aka space ship parts come crashing down.

I almost wish it would. Then in a few days people would stop talking about it (comet Elenin).
But it wont, because it isnt.

You dont need to lock yourself in your steel armored bullet proof house for the entire time.
Even now, you could use a satellite tracking program to find the specific times when UARS would be passing over (or landing on) your house... and then just organise to be there at 2:50 pm on the 22nd, 7:20 pm on the 22nd, 1:05am on the 23rd etc....

The heavens-above site has a link to "All passes of UARS".
For me, this gives just two passes each day on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th (the current expected dates).
If you then click on the date for each pass you get a nice map showing you at the middle and the ground track of the satellite. Also a ring showing if it would be 10 degrees above the horizon.
This should give anyone a nice clear idea of WHEN it would land on your house, if your are unlucky enough to have it happen.

www.heavens-above.com...

Originally posted by tauristercus
One chance in 3200 of being hit by ANY piece of existing space junk ? Really ??

Hmmmm,so not 1 in 2000 or 1 in 8500 or 1 in 4235 ... or any other estimate but a fairly accurate estimation of 1 in 3200. I'd just love to see the mathematical "reasoning" behind such a precise figure - assuming there is any.

Sometimes I'm almost certain they pull these (and similar) statistical "values" out of a hat at random !

I am a firm believer the 49.34% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Originally posted by ignant
except i wonder was nasa's 1 in 3200 actually based on 7 billion or a particular trajectory population in the path?

I suppose there's a whole bunch of ways to calculate it.
Here's one.
From wikipedia, the average human population density on earth is 13.3 per square km.
So if you smash up a random whole square km on earth, on average you'd kill 13.3 people.

But the UARS satellite isnt that big, so lets just assume that it would smash up a mere 1 square meter when it lands.
Thats a mere 1000000th of the above example, or a an average kill rate of 0.0000133, or a 1 in 75 thousand chance of killing someone.

Working backwards, I suppose we could then calculate that NASA assumed the UARS satellite will kill anyone in about 23 square meters.

Of course those 23 square meters dont have to be next to each other. Lots of different bits of debris over a wide area.

It is confusing, I just watched a video over at BBC news site that said the chances of being hit are one in 3000

from Space News Center

As of the moment, NASA says the 35-foot-long satellite will crash somewhere between 57 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south latitude — a projected crash zone that covers most of the planet, and particularly the inhabited parts. In this hemisphere, that includes everyone living between northern Newfoundland and the frigid ocean beyond the last point of land in South America.

Polar bears and Antarctic scientists are safe.

The satellite will partially burn up during reentry and, by NASA’s calculation, break into about 100 pieces, creating fireballs that should be visible even in daytime.

An estimated 26 of those pieces will survive the re-entry burn and will spray themselves in a linear debris field 500 miles long. The largest chunk should weigh about 300 pounds.

On the UARS reentry website, there is a Re-Entry and Risk Assessment PDF document where they show the working for the calculation.

They have identified 26 different bits of the satellite that would survive reentry, and for each one have calculated its impact area.
They arrive at a total "casualty area" of 22.38 square meters.

Dont be in those spots.

link

UARS Updates



The date of 23rd is give or take a day

It ran out of fuel in 2005, so it doesn't have the fuel to steer it into the ocean

Originally posted by alfa1


Dont be in those spots.

link

What spots?

All I read was their usual disclaimer talk how debris have never caused any fatalities.
This doesn't have a controlled ocean entry like the others.

Originally posted by violet
Dont be in those spots.

What spots?

Well of course we dont know where they are yet.
I was just referring to the 23 square meters of "casualty area".
Wherever they turn out to be, dont be there.

Originally posted by alfa1

Originally posted by violet
Dont be in those spots.

What spots?

Well of course we dont know where they are yet.
I was just referring to the 23 square meters of "casualty area".
Wherever they turn out to be, dont be there.

Great, they supposedly can tell us the mass and makeup of stars 50 light years away but can't tell us where their frikin satellite will fall here on Earth.

reply to post by tauristercus


this statistic is not for every single piece of space debris in the universe or in our solar system.

It is the statistic calculating how much of that satellite will break apart and how likely the falling debris from the satellite and only the falling debris from that specific satellite will cause a human casualty and that chance is:

1:3200

Peace

reply to post by Signals


I think NASA must have calculated those odds the same way they calculated the descent of the first Mars rover.

So 1 in 3200 people is likely to be struck by debris? That is a huge number of people, and one that would require massive precautionary actions. The Earth is covered 2/3rds by water, so already there can only be a 33% chance of it striking land. Then, the vast majority of that land worldwide is rural or sparsely populated.

The only way NASA's odds make any sense, is if they expect it to strike a fairly urban area. Maybe that is what they expect, but they aren't saying it yet?

When they pin down the are in the next day or so, will they issue evacuations? Or orders to stay indoors (which won't help much)? Should I start wearing my hard hat to work?

reply to post by Phage


Poor guy.

If 22.4 trillion UARS satellites were re-entering, all at the same time (and/or evenly distributed), then every person on Earth would have a 100% chance of being hit. I guess that's why NASA set the maximum number of re-entries at any given time at 22.399999999999 trillion. I guess they really do care.

reply to post by tauristercus


98.7% of statistics are made up on the spot

wonder if this is business as usual for NASA?