Heads Up: Satellite Coming Down

[Numo]

And where it lands, nobody knows.

http://www.startribune.com/14453287.html

Geez, I knew this was going to happen the minute I canceled the spy satellite rider on my homeowner's policy.

[spearmint]

Tin Foil Beanie time!

[MacMagus]

"...could contain hazardous materials"

That's another way of saying there's uranium or plutonium on-board.

There have already been so many nuclear powered satellites burnt up in the atmosphere that it's significantly raised the background radiation levels across the face of the earth.

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/The_Gro...k_999.html

The United States is another contributor to the high levels of radiation in near-Earth space. In April 1964, its Transit-SB navigation satellite with a radio isotope generator aboard failed to enter orbit and broke into pieces. While burning up in the atmosphere, it scattered about a kilogram of plutonium-238 over the western part of the Indian Ocean north of Madagascar. The result has been a 15-fold increase in background radiation around the world.

[mattkime]

CIA Satellite, like the CIA itself, crashes and burns.

[Lux Interior]

The result has been a 15-fold increase in background radiation around the world.

Pu-238 is an alpha emitter. Alphas have no range. No way a small amount is going to raise world-wide background levels 15x.

[MacMagus]

Re: BS.

I dunno where that particular number came from. It's probably wrong.

Find me another source that cites hard numbers for that effect.

The best that I've found so far mentions a few percentages of background radiation attributable to various terrestrial sources (coal-burning power plants, contamination from nuclear bomb testing, nuclear power, our own bodies) but nothing else that I've found mentions the amount that radiation pollution has added to natural background radiation.

Some sources try to "explain" that even if a satellite's radioactive fuel were to be vaporized in the atmosphere, it would at most add half-again or double the amount that the average person is exposed to radiation and that such levels of radiation are safer than smoking cigarettes or flying in airplanes. That people actually try to rationalize that kind of thing is creepy.