Where were you? (Dallas check-in)

[Judy <judy@judyshapiro.com>]

bel said:
> the reports are showing so far that 
> no one's been injured by falling debris. 
> I can't believe that with 
> thousands of chunks of metal 
> falling from the sky, it missed
> everyone....

Well, this part isn't all that surprising. Texas has a population of
about 23 million and an area of about 700,000 square kilometers. By my
calculations, that is one person per 35,000 square meters,
approximately. And, most of the people were inside; most of the debris
fluttered down, without enough force to get through a roof.  There are
no recorded instances of a person ever being killed by falling space
debris, despite all the meteorites that hit Earth every day.  (One
person did get a bruised thigh from a meteorite that fell through her
roof, a number of years ago.)

I think people find this so surprising because airplane crashes often
*do* kill people on the ground. The difference is, airplanes are
headed for population centers. (Most airports are near cities.)  So,
airplane crashes often happen in very crowded areas. (And it's even
worse with a deliberate attempt to crash an airplane into a crowded
area, as happened on 9/11.)  But, most random spots on the Earth are
pretty much devoid of people.

What I find remarkable is that one of the mission patches was found,
intact, all by itself.  Just sitting in the grass, no clothes or
anything attached.  I found this very poignant. CNN had a photo of the
patch, which I downloaded.  The picture is currently at:
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/TECH/space/02/02/shuttle
.columbia/story.patch.found.jpg

-- Judy, feeling quite sad