Wednesday, September 08, 2004
No new reapers today?
When man-made space trash comes crashing down, you have to wonder what would happen if it landed ON somebody. Well, actually we KNOW what would happen - splat! That's what happened to "George," the main character in Showtime's terrific series "Dead Like Me." Luckily no one was standing in the wrong spot today. Or maybe it just needed to be a crashing Mir toilet seat instead of a cosmic specimen cup.
A NASA capsule bearing precious atomic specimens that Hollywood stunt pilots were prepared to catch as it came into earth's atmosphere crashed into the desert this morning after a parachute that was to slow its fall failed to deploy.
. . .
"Clearly something has gone wrong here," Chris Jones, director of solar system exploration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which managed the mission, said in a NASA TV broadcast of the landing.
