Greg Tito said:
It's an imperfect world. Satellites fall down all the time. Or at least that's what NASA wants you to believe
Greg Tito said:
Not like it really matters, because a 6 ton satellite falling on your head isn't a problem or anything.
This takes the level of terrible writing and ridiculous spin that's become the norm on the Escapist news stories to an entirely new level.
Satellites don't fall because it's an imperfect world (what the fuck does that even mean?), satellites fall because they're put into orbits where we
know they'll fall before we even put them there in the first place. This isn't some strange accident, it's a normal, completely predictable occurrence.
And "that's what NASA wants you to believe"?
Are you fucking kidding me? I barely even know how to respond to how asinine that sounds. Satellites fall all the time. Often, you can see them falling. You can see records of the countless satellites that have fallen. You can see the projected dates of when a lot of satellites will fall.
The second quote really drives home the lengths contributors are willing to go to to drive interest in an article. I'm assuming here that it's an attempt at baiting for pageviews since the alternative, that the contributor is actually
that ignorant about a topic he's reporting on, is not a possibility I really wish to entertain.
The reality of the situation: they can make a relatively strong prediction about where it will land (protip: this is not a "simple physics calculation" based on its trajectory since the real world involves messy things like aerodynamics and we're talking about speeds and distances where a small change can have a big impact on the location of the crash site), the overwhelming majority of it will fall apart and burn up in atmosphere (which is the most immediate reason, though not the only reason by any means, why the second quote is so absolutely absurd), there has never been a recorded instance of falling space debris causing any serious damage, the chance of the debris hitting property or people is already absurdly low even if it
didn't fall apart and burn up in atmosphere, they can make very robust predictions about
when it will land (projections were surely made before the satellite was even sent up), and no, there isn't really any reasonable solution to letting satellites crash (the cost of bringing a satellite back during a shuttle mission would outstrip the gain in recycling the parts by several orders of magnitude).
TL;DR: Greg Tito, you should be fired. And then your name, aliases, and picture should be spread far and wide to all news outlets such that you never contribute another article this blatantly misleading and/or stupid.
