Wednesday, March 28, 2018

#OpenWhineWednesday

Oh great! This week I’ve got something real to whine about. It appears that the out-of-control-crashing-Chinese-satellite, Tiangong-1, is going to make reentry on Easter and there is nowhere I can go to escape it.

The map below shows the relative probabilities of debris landing within a given region. Yellow indicates locations that have a higher probability while green indicates areas of lower probability. Blue areas have zero probability of debris reentry since Tiangong-1 does not fly over these areas (north of 42.7° N latitude or south of 42.7° S latitude). These zero probability areas constitute about a third of the total Earth’s surface area.

aerospace tiangong-1 reentry map_1520863628952.png_11778911_ver1.0

Both of my bunkers are under attack: all of northern Utah and all of Southeast Michigan are in its path of doom! Maybe I should have retired to Florida or Arizona like everyone else. Although it looks like the only places in the continental US that you’re guaranteed to be debris free is a bit of northern Oregon, Washington, northern Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and northern Maine – not normally considered retirement destinations (unless you are hpsurf or Lady Bikki).

The only good news is that San Francisco and New York are also in its path. The bad news is that D.C. appears to have slipped the trajectory of the space junk.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go find my umbrella and tinfoil hat and get busy tracking this sucker.

tracking map screenshot

I would advise the rest of you stuck in the yellow band area do the same.

Linked By: American Digest, and Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!