Low-Risk

A 1,300-pound Nasa spacecraft to re-enter Earth's atmosphere

“The space agency said there is a one in 4,200 chance of being harmed by a piece of the probe, which it characterized as "low" risk.”

Do you think that 1/4200 represents the chance of me being hit?

Or someone in Bonavista (population 3,000) being hit?

Or the chance of one person somewhere in the world being hit?

My intuition tells me that of those three cases, the third is the more likely. And since there are 8,300,000,000 humans on Earth today, that must mean that MY chance of being hit by a piece of space debris is only 1 in 34,860,000,000,000

Of course, we are not told how that value of 4,200 was determined. Is that figure based on the area of Earth that is land, or only the area of land populated?

Perhaps more worrying should be the stated fact that the satellite weighs 1,300 pounds. I believe that the satellite will break apart as it re-enters earth’s atmosphere; I might be hit by two pieces of debris, and that would seem to double my chances of being hit.

There again, one of six pieces that crash into my house-lot might bounce off the walls of my house and THEN strike me dead …

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