I saw this thing on tv about a satellite coming at earth at 17,000 mph an hour, why is this such a big deal?

Question

i mean when the space ship columbia was coming into earth it was going a lot faster than that.. and it burned up in the atmosphere.. the people talking about the satellite were saying it could have been a huge catastrophe if they had not shot it down.

Answer 1

The International Space Station (ISS) travels about 17,800 MPH in its orbit, and the Space Shuttle is moving at the same speed when it docks with the ISS.  Many other satellites are in the same range of orbital radii and move at similar speeds.

So the Shuttle Columbia was moving more slowly than 17,000 MPH when it exploded.  The satellite that fell a couple of months ago had been in orbit at a similar speed, and its orbit was decaying, so it had slowed down somewhat.

So all you have to do is tell a news reporter, who knows absolutely nothing about what he/she is reporting on, that the speed is 17,000, and the reporter, who doesn't know about the speeds at which orbiting objects move, thinks it's a HUGE number, has a conniption, and attempts to infect the general public with the same conniption.

It was a routine speed and nothing to get all conniption-faced about.  There seems to be a federal law that news reporters have to be ignorant about anything they are going to report about.

Answer 2

The problem with that satellite was it was not under controlled flight - it was basically a big hunk of metal and rocket fuel that could have impacted in a large city (causing a lot of damage and loss of life), or near a coastline (causing huge tidal waves).

Columbia was smaller, broke into pieces, and was already on a shallow trajectory (not coming straight down like that satellite) so it had a lot more atmosphere to move through to burn up from friction.

Answer 3

A while back, there was a satellite who's orbit was decaying.  It was also carrying some toxic material, and depending on where it finally crashed, it could be potentially dangerous.  The Navy shot it down with a missile in order to break it into smaller pieces that would burn up on reentry rather than reach the ground.

Answer 4

because people thought it was a meteorite.

it was over lake arrowhead, into nevada, over barstow, beamont, everyone thought it was a meteor crashing into earth.

Answer 5

There is a difference in MASS between the tiny space shuttle-- and a HUGE IRON meteor -- say the size of a house -- hitting the Earth's atmosphere.

The shuttle would make a tiny scratch in the ground-- the meteor would make a BIG crater-- like this one maybe.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/meteorcra...

Answer 6

Television news likes to make things sound like a big deal when it isn't. Besides that, I don't believe they shot anything down. Shooting a falling object doesn't really accomplish much.

Anyways, the energy of a moving object is proportional to the square of its velocity. If an object fell in a populated area it could destroy property. (Assuming it survived its reentry.)