Space Junk
One of the craziest stories I’ve been following recently awaiting resolution was that of the Florida man whose house got bombed by NASA. Because way back in March 2021 the International Space Station decided to throw out 5,800 pounds of old batteries, expecting them to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere and disappear forever. But 1.6 pounds sneaked through, blowing a hole in Alejandro Otero’s roof in March 2024 and crashing through two floors while almost decapitating his son.
Whoops.
Commenting on the fact that the rocket scientists didn’t quite get the math right on this one, NASA wrote:
The International Space Station will perform a detailed investigation of the jettison and re-entry analysis to determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed. NASA specialists use engineering models to estimate how objects heat up and break apart during atmospheric re-entry. These models require detailed input parameters and are regularly updated when debris is found to have survived atmospheric re-entry to the ground.
NASA remains committed to responsibly operating in low Earth orbit, and mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people of Earth when space hardware must be released.
Comforting, no?
I wrote a while back about the spreadsheet that presumably exists somewhere where if you change the value of one cell (the one that calculates estimated future viewing patterns of Netflix content and therefore the rate at which the cost of that content is amortized), you could double Netflix’s profit or cut it in half. Well, apparently there’s also a spreadsheet somewhere where if you change the value of one cell (the one that calculates how much various metals heat up and break apart during re-entry), it might get us all annihilated by falling space debris.
All things considered, Mr. Otero seems to have dealt with this manifestation of what I call “Are you effing kidding me?!” risk in a remarkably calm manner. He’s waited for NASA to confirm its findings and is asking them to “resolve the damages” (though I have no idea what court has jurisdiction over space releases and/or whether or not anyone could prove that NASA was negligent here). But if they don’t “resolve the damages,” well, are you effing kidding me?
Here are the takeaways:
Risky actions can take a long time to materialize into tangible consequences. While federal law may have a 5-year statute of limitations, the real world can punish you whenever it wants, so reserve accordingly.
Exogenous factors outside of our control are conspiring against us all the time, even up in low Earth orbit. You may not have time to worry about space junk, but you need to be prepared for space junk.
Oh, and your model is probably wrong.
-Tim
