The introduction to every Asterix book begins with a description of the leading characters. Chief Vitalstatistix has only one fear: the sky might fall on his head.
He would be alarmed to note that on "approximately" the 23rd of September, a 6 000 kg NASA satellite that has run out of fuel is going to crash back to earth, somewhere between the latitudes of Edinburgh and Cape Town. That's "approximately" on Friday.
No one is sure exactly where and when the decommissioned satellite will land, or how much of it will be left after burning up through the atmosphere - NASA's current estimates are that 532kg of debris will hit the ground at speeds of up to 100 metres per second.
NASA estimates that the odds of a person being killed by any of this falling debris are "1 in 3200".
(Your chances of picking all the right numbers in the lottery are 1 in 13983816).
NASA doesn't explain how this vital statistic has been calculated - perhaps they've worked with the estimated size of the scattered debris and the average density of humans across the surface area of the potential strike zone. But however the “1 in 3200” risk of loss of human life on slide 8 of this NASA powerpoint has been calculated, it probably serves a public relations purpose at best, because even if NASA had calculated the risk to be much, much higher, I’m not sure that Asterix ,or even Ben Affleck, could do anything about it.
Marvellous.
He would be alarmed to note that on "approximately" the 23rd of September, a 6 000 kg NASA satellite that has run out of fuel is going to crash back to earth, somewhere between the latitudes of Edinburgh and Cape Town. That's "approximately" on Friday.
No one is sure exactly where and when the decommissioned satellite will land, or how much of it will be left after burning up through the atmosphere - NASA's current estimates are that 532kg of debris will hit the ground at speeds of up to 100 metres per second.
NASA estimates that the odds of a person being killed by any of this falling debris are "1 in 3200".
(Your chances of picking all the right numbers in the lottery are 1 in 13983816).
NASA doesn't explain how this vital statistic has been calculated - perhaps they've worked with the estimated size of the scattered debris and the average density of humans across the surface area of the potential strike zone. But however the “1 in 3200” risk of loss of human life on slide 8 of this NASA powerpoint has been calculated, it probably serves a public relations purpose at best, because even if NASA had calculated the risk to be much, much higher, I’m not sure that Asterix ,or even Ben Affleck, could do anything about it.
Marvellous.
