On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 07:46:07 -0700 (PDT), bob haller
wrote:

Poor Canada, first the Soviet satellite with the reactor on it, now this:http://www.indianexpress.com/news/na...-up-plunges-ba...

looks like no one was hurt...... it went down in a sparsley setteled
area.

I think the breakup may have been a more drawn out process than NASA
expected. I saw a meteor moving in the correct direction and in the
general part of the sky I was searching for UARS from San Angelo,
Texas around 8:20 Central, but no sign of the satellite. At first I
thought it was just a natural meteor, but the more I think about it,
that's a pretty damned big coincidence.

But that's at least one orbit, maybe two, before NASA says UARS came
down.

probably the worst would of been debris hitting a major metropoltian
area anywhere in the world.......

Even then the odds are great it would have just landed on someone's
roof or in a street. Lots of amazed gawkers standing around taking
pictures of it with the cellphones.

as a single hit item a debris hit to a nuke power plant or waste core
storage pool could of created another fukashima

Not really. Remember, it isn't going 17,000mph when it hits the
ground, it's at terminal velocity. Hitting a building isn't any worse
than hitting the ground, and there is lots of space junk (Delta II
parts, Columbia wreckage, tanks from SkyLab) that is still more or
less recognizable after slamming into the ground. A space debris hit
is not going to cause a power plant to go China Syndrome.

Brian