I don't know why everyone was worried...It always seemed to me that keeping the thing up there was the hard part. Bring it down should have been a piece of cake.
Seriously, what a light show it would have been. End of an era. Dosvaydania (hope I at least came close to spelling that properly.)
I guess I'm Un-Canadian: No Beer, No Hockey, No Paul Martin!
Posts
656
I was okay about Mir coming down until the news services started showing where they expected it to land. It reminded me of Skylab. No chance of hitting land they said. It hit the North West Territories.
This in mind, I thought for sure it would hit in Australia or Argentina.
Skylab impacted in the Australian Outback. A piece of it killed a cow.
The one that hit the NWT was Cosmos 956. It was potentially a big problem because it was a nuclear powered satellite, and the Russians were not forthcoming on how much radioactive material was aboard or what isotopes were involved.
And before anyone gets too busy ragging on Mir, let's just remember that it was sent up for a 5-year life span, and they got 15 out of it. Beats many of NASA's accomplishments hollow - including Skylab.