Fall is near, all six tons of it
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The kids are back in school, it's nearly autumn, the leaves are ready to fall, and so is a six-ton NASA satellite.
We'll tell you where in our 11 p.m. broadcast!
(I really wish I could do that. It is SO HARD to panic people properly in a column.)
Seriously, it's due any minute now if it hasn't already put a big steaming divot in a golf course someplace.
This terror has been underreported thus far, for my money, and I can't figure out why the 20-year-old Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite's impending violent return home isn't being mined for hysteria. Why aren't you stocking up on bottled water, Cipro and bicycle helmets? What are you worrying about, the eurozone crisis?
NASA doesn't even know where it's going to crash -- though it could be anywhere between 57 degrees north and 57 degrees south of the equator. That takes in most of the people in the world, including all of the U.S. So yes, Pittsburgh, It Could Happen Here. And then: space virus? Radioactive zombies? Speculation would be irresponsible, so join in.
If the satellite takes out the Civic Arena, that would save us a lot of time and money. On the other hand, it could take out the new North Shore T station. I've long suspected we can't have nice things.
NASA may say the risk to hapless life is 1 in 3,200, but that's twice as likely as death by drowning, and you still stay out of the water for an hour after lunch.
NASA is also not quite sure when the bus-sized hunk of your tax dollars at work will slip out of orbit completely and lose its battle with gravity. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Saturday (your weekend forecast: 30 percent chance of hardware). Maybe that siren you hear in the distance is headed for what used to be your garage.
Those of you who prefer to think things through before stampeding right to doomsday -- killjoys -- may point out that even really large objects plummeting toward all we hold dear tend to burn up on re-entry and fall as a gentle particulate rain. You may not care about spacecraft ash in your reservoir, but it's not Tang. We don't know where it's been.
First Published September 22, 2011 12:00 am
