Over the last week, from local to national news, everyone has been commenting on the likelihood of being in the path of the falling Chinese space station. The chance of being hit by debris was one in a trillion, they said. My question would be, how did they ever find data to come up with that or any other statistical figure?

On the news Saturday morning I saw this interchange:

             Mike Massimino gives a full explanation of why the Chinese space station is going to come down soon.
             Talking head who wasn’t listening says, “But Mike, why is the space station going to come down?”
             Massimino calmly explains again, without missing a beat, proving why he is the usual face of NASA.

Well, the wait is over. The space station hit open water in the Pacific last night.

This isn’t the first space station to fall out of the sky, out of control. American’s first space station did the same in 1979. To see what happened then, go to 299. I Survived Skylab. For a full report on that space station, see 297. Skylab 1 and 298. Skylab 2.