They claim the odds are “an acceptable risk, less than 1 in 10,000 chance of hitting a person on the ground”.
The parts most likely to survive are the 88 2-by-3-foot titanium fuel tanks.
I started to calculate this way:
I guess you’d divide the surface of the sphere by
[that’s where I stopped]
Whatever the number, I’d be happier if they sent them into too high an orbit, so they would float away instead of fall. (They still have year’s worth of fuel.)
If you missed the headline, they are scrapping them after less than 5 years in service because the main backer went bankrupt. It seems it would cost millions to just keep them in a steady orbit.
i dunno…those odds are kind of high it seems, but i think you answered your own topic. or at least that’s what they say. i would think they’d be able to somewhat control where they go when they bring 'em down, at least, say, over the pacific ocean.
but i’d hope that the odds of winning the lottery would be lower than getting hit by one of 88 satellites.
do you have a cite for the article?
actually only 74 of them are going to be directed back yo earth. the other 14, which are not ooperational at the time, would be sent down during the next century.
as for sending the satellites to ahigher orbit, i doubt that they carry the sufficient fuel for that. since the cost of a launch increases exponentially with the amount os fuel, it wouldnt be cost effective to send the satellite with and unnecesary load of fuel.
of course the low orbit selected–550 miles-- is due to the fact that in higher orbits there would be and unnacveptable delay in communications due to the extra distance that the microwave wold have to traverse.
man, my typewriting has gone berserk.
The impression that I got was that they will indeed be coming down in the next century, they won’t exactly be sent down.
Any amount greater than zero would be sufficient
As far as area/people:
people~= 6 billion
which comes out to about 75 thousand square meters per person.
ubermensch: the article appeared today on msn, you might still be able to find it in their home page. if not search for it in their data base.
i downloaded it earlier, if you leave your email address i could send it to you.
Just out of curiosity, why would it cost millions to keep them in a steady orbit? Isn’t the biggest expense just getting the things up there in the first place? They already have the fuel onboard and would only need a ground control staff to fire the thrusters. Right?
Fascinating story, however.
FYI- The link can be found here.
This whole orbiting atrocity has to go down as one of the “worst failures of marketing and product placement” ever. IIUK, it cost approximately $7 Billion to put into place, and they couldn’t even sell it for $50 Million. And think of those people that did buy one of the $3000 phones, now just expensive junk.
Excuse me - it wasn’t just “marketing and product placement” - the damn things dodn’t even work right either. A couple people at bought them, and could not get them to work on a clear day in Kansas. Pretty sad.
Only if you speed them up to escape velocity will they no longer be a problem. Any boost short of that is just changing their orbit to a more eccentric eliptical orbit that will most likely hit the atmosphere sooner or later.
As to the cost of keeping them orbiting: you have to pay someone to babysit them until a decision has been made as to their disposition. Even at 500+ miles there’s enough atmosphere to slow them down so that they start falling.
Ubermensch wrote:
They are. The odds are less than 1 in 10,000 that a piece of satellite will hit anyone. Multiply by 5 billion to determine the odds that a piece of satellite will hit you.
AWB wrote:
The article pointed to by CnoteChris says that MOT is spending $10M per month to keep the satellites in orbit. That’s enough to pay a significant staff of someones. I’m guessing there’s more to it than this. Anyone know?