Serious Threats from Outer Space

Abstract

Have you ever wondered if you might be hit by a piece of space junk falling out of the sky? Well not to worry. The chances of being hit by a piece of orbital debris or a meteorite are fewer than your getting the world’s rarest disease or being killed by a falling coconut if you only visited a tropical paradise for only 1 h in your entire lifetime. In over a half century of space activities there is perhaps one instance of a cow being killed in Africa and that was many decades ago. More recently in 1997 a woman was reportedly brushed on the shoulder by a lightweight fragment of space debris falling from the skies.

This must be the context of our thinking…the vast new dimensions of our science and our discovery…and of the awful majesty of outer space.

—Adlai Stevenson at Harvard University (1965)