NASA and SpaceX misjudged the risks from reentering space junk
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
This article is about absolutes and fear. To conflate the two is an obvious rhetorical trick that amounts to clickbait, approximately.
"It's rare for a reentering object to hit a structure..." which is an example of the probability and the hazard. So the risk by most people's definition is "low".
So what's the problem? "According to the European Space Agency, the annual risk..." is the problem. Misusing (or misunderstanding) terminology is typical. Unfortunately, typical for Ars.
“"During its initial design, the Dragon spacecraft trunk was evaluated for reentry breakup and was predicted to burn up fully," NASA said in a statement. "The information from the debris recovery provides an opportunity for teams to improve debris modeling. NASA and SpaceX will continue exploring additional solutions as we learn from the discovered debris."”
and
“These incidents highlight an urgency for more research into what happens when a spacecraft makes an uncontrolled reentry into the atmosphere, according to engineers from the Aerospace Corporation”.
The inclusion at the end of the article about how low the risk of space debris injuring an individual serves to tell the reader space debris hitting them is not something they need to worry about. Again, this is about experts updating and improving their models, especially as the number of space launches grows dramatically, sometimes using novel materials.
I agree people are generally very bad at understanding the relationships among probabilities, hazards, and risks. But this article cites multiple, independent experts, and specifically highlights how this is not a problem of you getting hit by space debris, which is quite anti-clickbait.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/climate/ozone-satellites....
Privatize the profits, socialize the disaster.
Rocket launches have serious environment costs too.