Your blood could turn to powder?
I’m staying out of this.
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” they say. However, if you really want to insist that it’s your car, you can speak to my lawyer about all of those damages that “happened” when your car arrived in my yard.
Same thing with your space junk.
Don’t touch it! It’s Evil!
Well, go ahead but just remember, You break it, you buy it.
Really? I knew there was one US woman that saw a flash while walking and then felt a little ‘tink’ when something very lightly hit her shoulder. It was a piece of mesh from a Delta Five rocket.
A number of news organizations, NASA’s included, are claiming no one’s ever been hurt by falling debris. I wonder why the discrepancy.
Remember, kids, “If you see a rocket, don’t touch it! Don’t let anyone else touch it! Leave it alone! Tell a nation-state.”
As Alka Seltzer mentioned, I’m guessing they want to keep the crash scene intact for study. This is going to be a more frequent occurrence in the future, and they need to know as much as possible about it.
I already knew what you linked to before I even clicked it.
“You’ll put your eye out!”
nm, wrong thread.
Maybe not on a hunk of scrap, but perhaps in a leaky fuel tank that survives re-entry. Or maybe it’s not leaky: maybe it’s still pressurized, and you start fiddling with it, and it blows up in your face. Or maybe an on-board battery survives intact, and zaps you. Or maybe it’s not intact, and it leaks toxic fluid onto your skin.
With very rare exceptions, there’s not really a good reason in favor of touching any of these parts. Combine that with very good reasons against touching any of these parts (toxicity, sharp edges, and maybe extreme temperatures immediately after impact), and the most sensible policy is to tell the general public to just not touch any of it. It’s a simple rule, easy to remember, and doesn’t require any judgment on the part of the public.
Did they use that prop for MST3000?
Per the ownership of said spacecraft, it’s a matter of international law. Ownership is retained by said nation or corporation throughout the entire life of the S/C–even after re-entry. Keeping any S/C part you find in the US is a Federal offense, and you could be arrested, prosecuted, and fined for theft of property. If you sell said item, you’ll also be charged with fencing stolen property. This is SOP for all the countries I’ve been in with respect to satellites and rocket launches. There’s too much money to be lost by trying to score with the “finders–keepers” argument. If you decide to say int’l law no longer applies to you, the cost could be loosing access to other spacecraft currently or in the future. The US has an enormous amount of leverage here, since the US has built most of the commercial GEO’s.
OTOH, if you suffered property damage, injury, or death, from a falling piece of S/C debris, the owner is legally and financially responsible.
So, all other things being equal, you have a finitely very small chance of appearing on a talk show if you survive a hit from the debris.
My bad–I wasn’t serious and meant to include a link.
Evidently I’m neither Man nor Devo.
Well I do know that stotable liquids used in ICBM were toxic to the point of instant lethality, And as ICBM at jettisoned in stages, sometimes well before the atmosphere I could think that they woud retain toxity.
Psst - post #9.
I thought that would be based on that one short story of a primitive society where no one is allowed to touch metal, and you discover the reason why is radioactive fallout from Armageddon.
My fault for not having heard the whoosh as that debris flew by. Thanks.
The debris being the shattered bits of post, not an actual whoosh (that was way too obscure to have note included a link and expect people to get).
What cracks me up about this whole thing is, in 1969 we were able to land men on the moon 250,000 miles away, and bring them back to earth using computers less powerful than the digital watch on your arm, yet… in 2011 they can’t even figure out where this junk is going to land with all the super computers available to the US government. Really?
Yes. There are all sort of variables, like how many pieces it will break up into. Where will that happen? The physics is rather complicated. There is no one there to radio NASA and tell them what is going on.