Americans don't mind. That's why they support candidates who favor bigger federal government after all.
I'm not thinking that a vote for Mike Huckabee or John McCain or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton means you want a spy satellite to come plummeting down to Earth. But the bigger government gets, the more f&#@-ups there will be. It's just a matter of which form it will take.
Excellent analogy, it's right on. Except for the little matter that there's 0% chance that your fuel pump will land on my, or anyone else's, house (assuming that it wouldn't burn up on re-entry). I hope we got our money's worth on the thing.
Right. It's much better that we never sent anything into space at all. That way there would be no opportunity for error.
It was a spy satellite right? I mean, this thing might have saved America by finding all those WMDs in Iraq. What?
Astrophysicist, Yyvon Bengtrellpa predicts that the satellite will crash here: The King will be inside the satellite...
Don't be silly...Matt is just using the Superdave model of finding absolutely ridiculous facts to support hairbrained blanket statements. He learned from the best there is, really.
What have we gained by shooting this thing into space? Nope. No, private industry is not perfect of course. But at least if one of their satellites crashes down and does some damage, they can be held responsible without it costing me anything.
Except that it could fail on the highway, causing spejic's car to slow unexpectedly which makes other drivers swerve to avoid him thus causing the 36 deaths in the resulting 42 car pile-up that we could easily have avoided simply by disbanding our democracy and reverting back to the lawless anarchic chaos of such Golden Ages as 5th through 10th century Europe.
Well, the quintet of legally binding treaties which govern space law includes one - the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects - which applies here. The US was one of the principle authors of the convention, and ratified it long ago. It holds the launching states and its partners liable for all damage caused by objects, and makes the nation in which an object is launched liable - even if the nation itself was not involved in building, planning, or research related to the object. Regarding private citizens, they have to file a claim via their government as the procedures laid out in the Liability Convention provide for state-to-state claims only. No provision is made for individuals within a launching state to mae a claim via the convention, though domestic remedies would be possible. Regarding privately owned satellites, the rules regarding liability for a launching state still apply. Liability Convention here (below the GA Resolution which produced it - it isn't too long a read) and UNOOSA is here. (sorry for the digression into Space Law - I talked about this in class last week before the satellite coming down was announced, so it is all pretty fresh in my mind!)
What? It's not like this is a serious discussion or anything. At least, Mr. Burlew isn't treating it that way so I feel no compulsion to do so either.