Russian farmer sues space agency for falling rocket wrote:Wed Mar 26, 9:34 AM
By Natalya Sokhareva
BARNAUL, Russia (Reuters) - A shepherd is suing Russia's space agency for compensation after he said a 10-foot-long chunk of metal from a space rocket fell into his yard, just missing his outdoor toilet.
Boris Urmatov, who is asking for 1 million roubles ($42,000) from the Roskosmos agency, lives in a small village that lies underneath the flight path of rockets taking off from the Baikonur launchpad Russia leases in nearby Kazakhstan.
"Something woke him up in the night, like something exploded. Since he's visually handicapped he didn't notice the fallen rocket parts," Urmatov's sister Marina told Reuters from the village of Kyrlyk, in Russia's Altai region.
"But in the morning in front of the shepherd hut he saw this enormous metal casing, as smooth as an egg," she said by telephone from the village, which is 2,175 miles east of Moscow. "It nearly crushed the outhouse."
She said her brother was seeking damages to compensate him for the stress he suffered.
Residents in the neighboring village of Ust-Kan said rocket pieces regularly rain down on their area. Parts of the surrounding countryside are designated special zones where people may not go during the launches.
"Sometimes it's smooth metal casings, sometimes it's bolts. I remember something like an engine fell once," said Anatoly Kazakov, an Ust-Kan resident.
"THEY FLY, THEY FALL"
Roskosmos said it regularly warns residents when a launch is scheduled, and in a history stretching back over 50 years and 400 rockets, only a few space-bound rocket parts have fallen outside designated areas.
"Technologically speaking, these parts are supposed to fall off during a launch. They fly, they fall, they fly, they fall. It's how they work," said Roskosmos spokesman Alexander Vorobyov.
He said Roskosmos regularly sends out an investigation team to check on reports of damage from rocket parts, but it could only pay compensation if a court rules for damages.
"If a court determines that, yes, those are rocket parts, they fell on his land, then for sure he will be compensated. No question about it. We live in a civilized, law-abiding country," Vorobyov said.
Izvestia newspaper said Roskosmos had only once paid out compensation over rocket debris to a private individual -- 10,000 roubles in 2001 -- when a piece fell on his yard as he was outside chopping wood.
"What is abnormal is when somebody gets greedy, and it turns out the parts did not fall on his land, but that they were dragged there. Those moments are not good," Vorobyov said.
"But those are individual instances. We in no way refuse to pay out compensation. It just has to go through the court system."
and . . .
Australian farmer finds mystery space junk wrote:Fri Mar 28, 12:57 AM
CANBERRA (Reuters) - A cattle farmer in Australia's remote northern outback on Friday said he had found a giant ball of twisted metal, which he believes is space junk from a rocket used to launch communications satellites.
Farmer James Stirton found the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane.
But Stirton only started inquiring into what the ball of metal really was, and where it had come from, in the past week.
"I was riding out to check some cattle, and I came around the corner and there it was in a paddock," Stirton told Reuters on Friday.
"I know a lot of about sheep and cattle but I don't know much about satellites. But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket."
He said the object was hollow, and covered in a carbon-fiber material. He has contacted some U.S.-based aerospace companies to try to find out what the object really is.
Sydney's Powerhouse Museum said it was not uncommon for people to find spacejunk in remote areas of Australia.
In 1979, large parts of the Skylab space station fell to earth near a tiny outback town in Australia's west. A local council sent NASA a ticket for littering and then the United States President Jimmy Carter rang a local motel to apologize.
Nice and convienient that these falling pieces of machinery are getting labelled as part of the space programs.
