norskog (01/26/83)
#R:houxz:-25500:fortune:10200003:000:117 fortune!norskog Jan 25 17:59:00 1983 Yes, but what is the linear dimension of water, the U.S, and Canada in the path of Cosmos? Think clearly, damn it!
karn (01/26/83)
The probability estimates were correct. The earth was rotating inside the (relatively fixed) plane of Cosmos's orbit, and the "mean motion" (number of orbits per day) was somewhat over 16. Over just a half day, the "tracks" as drawn on a map get pretty dense. This means that unless you knew exactly the orbit in which it was going to come down that it could do so almost anywhere between 65 deg north and south latitude. It turns out that the percentages for land, ocean, etc, of the earth's surface don't change much if you discount the arctic regions. The best analogy I can come up with for explaining why reentries are so hard to predict is a roulette wheel with the ball as the satellite - the motion of the ball around the race may be easy to predict, but there are too many unknowns involved when the ball "decays" and starts to bounce off the wheel. The best you can do is count up the colors and estimate probabilities. Perhaps this is an example of Russian Roulette? (sorry) Phil
norskog (01/27/83)
#R:houxz:-25500:fortune:10200004:000:211 fortune!norskog Jan 26 15:04:00 1983 Of course, if you are implying that the Pentagon used that reasoning to guess the probabilities, that calls into question the entire nuclear deterrent, because our missiles would probably be aimed very badly.