this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

the probability that the satellite debris will not be completely burned during the fall and cause injury or death to people on the ground is 0.6 per year. This means it would happen once every two years

That doesn’t mean it will fucking hit someone. The surface area of the planet is 510e12 m^2. There are about 8B people on the planet. Even if we conservatively assume that everyone is lying flat on their back in the middle of an open field, that’s only about 8B m^2 of vulnerable surface area. At that rate, you’d expect an injury interval of 510e12 / 8e9 / 0.6 = 1 injury every 106 thousand years. Yes there is some correlation of common orbits and human population, so we can be conservative and put it at 50,000 years.