36 Replies to “Skylab is falling! Skylab is falling!”

  2. “NASA has advised the public not to touch any debris that may reach the surface, should it be discovered. Instead, the space agency says that anyone who finds satellite debris should contact their local law enforcement agency.”
    Yea, right, finders keepers, mofos

  3. “Look at how much of Earth is covered with water,” Victoria Samson, the Washington Office Director of the Secure World Foundation, an organization dedicated to the peaceful use of outer space, told SPACE.com this week. “There’s a really good chance it’s going to go straight into the ocean.”
    Okay…

  7. I blame Al Gore.
    “Solar effects from the sun can create an extra drag on satellites in space because they can heat the Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to expand, agency officials have said.”

  13. flaunagirl @ 1:37 As Algore’s size increases in reverse proportion to his intellect decreases, it is very difficult to calculate how much of the sun heated earth he will actually occupy when Skylab hits the ground. Cheers;

  14. hopefully it will land on a democrat’s house!!!
    Posted by: Paul in calgary at September 17, 2011 2:56 AM
    What an asswhole, and a disgraceful embarrassment for intelligent conservatives.

  15. Can we finish this sentence?
    Solar effects from the sun can create an extra drag on satellites in space because they can heat the Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to expand, agency officials have said, however….
    NASA wants to reassure the public that this solar heating only affects the upper atmosphere and has absolutely nothing to do with global warming.

  17. Let me get this straight, they say they can predict climate change 20,50,100 years from now, but can’t say for certain where the satellite is going to crash?

  18. “NASA expects at least 26 large pieces of the massive satellite to survive the scorching temperatures of re-entry and reach Earth’s surface.”
    What really worries me is the space aliens that are coming to get us because we’re doing such a poor job of taking care of things.

  19. “Falling in latitudes of northern Cananda…”
    Umm, it doesn’t even come close to Canada. Might as well say Alaska latitude if using a land reference.
    “1 in 3200 of being hit”. Pretty high odds.

  20. “Let me get this straight, they say they can predict climate change 20,50,100 years from now, but can’t say for certain where the satellite is going to crash?”
    Exactly. You really don’t get how science works, do you? Trends are easy to forecast, but the more precise you try to get, the harder it is. So, for instance, we can say “skylab is going to crash”. And we can say “it’s going to crash in year X”. Now we might be off by a day or two, but we’re a lot closer than the SkyLab denier who starts screaming that SkyLab is actually going to accelerate and fly off into interstellar space.

  22. This is actually really good. Too much junk in space. This is small step towards cleanup.
    Once it cools down, why would the debris be dangerous? Would it happen to be worth anything?

  23. “There is a 1-in-3,200 chance of satellite debris hitting a person on the ground, odds that NASA says are extremely remote.”
    I call BS both on the odds, and that NASA actually reported those odds. There’s more than a few zeros missing.

  25. Not necessarily, Tenebris. If every fat person in the world went as quickly as possible to the areas where the debris is most likely to land, and they all lay fat on their backs, spread-eagled, and…
    Actually, not even then. You’re right on both counts.

  26. “sooner than expected” sounds alarming and is repeated in all news stories I’ve seen as if it’s a colossal fail. It’s just a 24 hour fine-tune based on extra drag from an uptick in solar wind. I join with Tenebris in the earlier comment to call BS. There are many zeroes missing in that 1:3200 chance. Even adding six noughts seems low.

  27. ES, Kosmos didn’t have a nuclear reactor in it either. No satellite does. What they have is RTGs, radioactive thermo-electric generators. They produce electricity from decay heat of radio-isotopes. Mostly these are only used for operations at or beyond Mars orbit. The only reason you use one in Earth orbit is if you have very high electricity demands.

  29. The chicken littles are in angst again.
    So much potential disaters , so little time to choose your doom.

  33. Alexis
    U don’t do math very well, do you
    I’ll go with Ken Moore and Tenebris on the “odds” thing, tho there could be an Alex or two working at NASA, and some one that dense could screw it up to such an extent

  34. Obamba should send up the space shuttle to and try for a controlled safer re-entry…..Oh yea, forgot. Maybe next time….oh yea again.

  35. Re:
    Actually, if you make a rough estimate assuming each human blocks about three square feet of the earth’s surface from the path of any debris, and divide roughly three times the world’s population (18,000,000,000) into roughly the square footage of the entire planet (5,500,000,000,000,000), then multiply by 26 (one for each anticipated piece of debris), you get approximately 1/11752. I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that those numbers are a few orders of magnitude off. It might be a bit low given how densely packed people are in some areas, but aside from that the numbers pass a simple sanity test…

  36. GAYm:
    U don’t do da math or da engrish very well, do u
    ugh. Even just parodying you makes me feel disgusting.

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