Family whose roof was damaged by space debris files claims against NASA

"Whatever NASA does is going to send a strong signal to the space industry."

The owner of a home in southwestern Florida has formally submitted a claim to NASA for damages caused by a chunk of space debris that fell through his roof in March.

The legal case is unprecedented—no one has evidently made such a claim against NASA before. How the space agency responds will set a precedent, and that may be important in a world where there is ever more activity in orbit, with space debris and vehicles increasingly making uncontrolled reentries through Earth's atmosphere.

Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, was not home when part of a battery pack from the International Space Station crashed through his home on March 8. His son Daniel, 19, was home but escaped injury. NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.

An attorney for the Otero family, Mica Nguyen Worthy, told Ars that she has asked NASA for "in excess of $80,000" for non-insured property damage loss, business interruption damages, emotional and mental anguish damages, and the costs for assistance from third parties.

"We intentionally kept it very reasonable because we did not want it to appear to NASA that my clients are seeking a windfall," Worthy said.

Lol

Got radioactive? Space parasite?

how to dispose of space garbage responsibly?

Not a big issue if it’s caused by NASA. If CCP, didnt happen also worldwide mass protest, burn cars, smash windows

Long ago, some aliens left their rubbish on Earth had some how evolved...

Owaiii...

Really strong alloy, can survive re-entry.

This only ccp do, burn Japanese car burn Korean supermarket

Kesienz, macam mana nak beat 11 Apollo programs, 5 of them successfully landed on moon all that under 4 years using 60s technologies.

Also, kesienz people who still believe in fairy tales.

nasa sure have insurance for this.

Venom!

It's inconel

Variations of inconel also used in the interior of some oil pipes that's connected to oil wells in malaysia too. We do welding on it before and the welding rods was imported from USA and very expensive. iinm per pipe joint weld of around 6" pipe diameter with slightly above 1" thick is rm4000 per joint many years ago lol

We use it in our plant for wet scrubbing of used process gasses, a hi temp & corrosive application.

NASA got liability insurance for this kind of stuff. If CCP space program, good luck even trying to sue them lol

Uncontrolled entry of space debris will always be a possibility. While rocket stage or bigger object can be fitted with control mechanism to control its descent somewhat, small items will always lack the room to do so and they are expected to burn up in the atmosphere during re-entry due to small size. But the speed and entry angle might occassionally let some items actually hit the surface, which cannot be predicted nor controlled.

The problem with space is that in order to move anywhere, you have to throw away some thing to provide thrust. Lets say someone builds a shuttle that travel in space to collect the discarded objects instead of just jettison them and let them fall to the ground, that shuttle will need to carry fuels which will be ejected to provide thrust. And the shuttle will need to be refuel frequently to carry out its task. Even if you dock that shuttle to the space stations, the cost of sending up the fuels just to be burned up later are going to be expensive. It will become much cheaper if the shuttle is docked to a space elevator and the fuels needed just being sent up that way, and the discarded objects can also be sent down via the elevator. Without the space elevator, once the shuttle collect the objects they still have to either accelerate them to escape velocity so those objects can be throw towards the sun for example, or wait for the next supply run to transport those discarded objects back to Earth, all going to be very costly.


This post has been edited by vhs: Jun 23 2024, 02:11 AM

Actually insurance works on the principle of multiple entities paying a smaller amount to share a risk. There is not enough space agencies in the world to actually "share the risk" by paying premium in this manner. Easier to just budget for potential lawsuit in their budget allocation and use it when being sued. Anyway, it is only 80K. not even enough to pay one of their staff a year salary.

Apparently NASA is its own "insurance company" and by laws can also act as insurance company to provide space insurance for other 3rd parties. Although there are also other companies providing space insurance to private space ventures. NASA itself does not need it because at this point it already bear the majority of the exposures so they just need to budget for it.

https://us.milliman.com/en/insight/will-spa...-auto-insurance

There are key components to determine if a risk is insurable. They often include characteristics such as:

There must be a large number of homogeneous exposure units
The loss must be fortuitous, meaning accidental and unintentional
The loss must be definite, determinable, and measurable
The loss should not be systemic in nature such that many risks are exposed to the same event resulting in potentially catastrophic loss
The chance of loss must be calculable
The premium must be economically feasible

This post has been edited by vhs: Jun 23 2024, 01:55 AM