Apathy Sketchpad

Today I watched, for the first time, an episode from series two of The West Wing, called The Fall’s Gonna Kill You. A sub-plot is that Donna is terribly concerned about a fax from NASA which says a Chinese satellite is going to crash to Earth and nobody knows where or when. Everyone else knows that kind of fax comes once every couple of weeks, but nobody tells Donna because it’s amusing. Josh comments that something’s fallen out of orbit every day since we started putting it up there, and nobody’s ever been hurt by any of it.

A few hours later, this arrives in my Google Reader feed, via the BBC:

Satellite could plummet to Earth

No details of the satellite were given

A “large” US spy satellite has gone out of control and is expected to crash to Earth some time in late February or March, government sources say.

Officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the satellite had lost power and propulsion, and could contain hazardous materials.

The White House said it was monitoring the situation.

A spokesman said “numerous” satellites had come out of orbit and fallen back to Earth harmlessly over the years.

How great is that?