Hypothetical: Life in an asteroid belt.

[Rain Man]

If the earth was situated inside a belt of asteroids that hit earth frequently, do you think our civilization would have evolved differently? Feel free to discussion any aspect: daily lives, education, religion, agriculture, politics...anything you want.

For the sake of starting with the same assumptions, let's go with the following:

As a typical human being, you have a 50% chance each day* of getting pinged by a micrometeor that is large enough to feel temporarily like you got stung by a bee.

You would have a 1 in 1,000 chance* in a given week to be hit by a meteor that is large enough to knock you cold or break a bone.

You would have a 1 in 50,000 chance* each week of being hit by a metor large enough to kill you.

Once a year, a big meteor hits and takes out an area of 1 to 10 square miles.

Once every 10 years, a bigger meteor hits and takes out an area of 500 square miles.







* Higher odds for Turkish quadrupedal walkers since they would have more exposed surface area.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

As an aside, I set my sights on being an orbital mechanics expert when I was in college. I was a teaching assistant in an orbital mechanics class and thought it was way cool. Then Christa McAuliffe had to go and push the wrong button, and NASA stopped hiring orbital mechanics guys for a while.

somebody, besides skip, tell me if i'm wrong...


if the satellites are in orbit around the earth and the asteroids are crossing the path of the earth(or earth crossing the path of the asteroids) and hitting it randomly ........... doesn't that mean they will randomly hit the satellites too?

[Frankie]

Originally Posted by Laz

somebody, besides skip, tell me if i'm wrong...

You are wrong. Earth is NOT flat blue.

[4th and Long]

Originally Posted by Laz

somebody, besides skip, tell me if i'm wrong...


if the satellites are in orbit around the earth and the asteroids are crossing the path of the earth(or earth crossing the path of the asteroids) and hitting it randomly ........... doesn't that mean they will randomly hit the satellites too?

The satellites in orbit around the earth, frequently take impacts from minute space particles the size of grains of sand. These can be devastating if the satellites are older and not equipped to handle such impacts. NASA is even looking at ways to remove "space junk" that is currently in orbit around the planet which can impact our satellites as well. That aside, the earth is a much larger target for an asteroid impact than a satellite, obviously. Satellite impacts, by the numbers, would be far less at risk that the earth, due to their smaller size.