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    The Great Space Ball Mystery Has Been Solved

    The Great Space Ball Mystery Has Been Solved

    The Great Space Ball Mystery of ought-eleven has been solved, but it's not an extraterrestrial probe or government doomsday device or anything cool like that. Turns out it's only a "bladder tank." When a mysterious crusty space ball crash-landed in Namibia in November, calls to NASA and the European Space Agency didn't get authorities any closer to pinning down what exactly had landed in their backyards, while Mel Brooks fans delighted in the nod in the "space ball" name and the rest ogled the astro-nut to guess at what it is. The story has been picked up widely the last few days, but now we know what it is: Gawker's Adrian Chen wrote about the 13-pound ball on Friday morning and a commenter identified it. "For anyone wondering what it actually is, it's likely a 39-litre hydrazine bladder tank (based on its apparent size; there are also much larger hydrazine tanks)," he wrote. "They're used on unmanned rockets for satellite launches, which would explain why they're falling down in such a specific geographic footprint." We're not sure what this is more of a testament to: the power of online crowdsourcing or the Internet's fascination with anything with the word "balls" in it. In any case, we had our fingers crossed for doomsday device.

     
    • kien  •  Tucson, Arizona  •  5 mths ago
      it's just the mythbusters cannonball....
    • FrigginFedUp  •  5 mths ago
      The best comment was its an alien beer keg
      • Austin Gremlin is Excited 5 mths ago
        That's impossible. As Agent Zed once said, "We're not hosting an intergalactic keger."
      • Alex 5 mths ago
        Hydrazine is some high octane beer.
      • Daniel Healing 5 mths ago
        @FrigginFedUp ... alien beer BALL, you retard, beer BALL ..... sheesh
    • John Locke  •  5 mths ago
      Well, crap. Now what am I going to do with this bunker full of MREs for the next 50 years???
      • ca2000 5 mths ago
        Good one!
      • Mikie 5 mths ago
        At leastYyu don't have to cook for some time
      • A Yahoo! User 5 mths ago
        Geez, you would have to tap into a river to flush out 50 years worth.
    • JOND  •  5 mths ago
      And when one of these things lands on someone's head, will they start caring about how they eject these things into Earth's orbit?
      • Paul 5 mths ago
        nope
      • K. 5 mths ago
        You realize in all our years of blasting stuff into space, only one person has ever been verifiably hit with returning space debris of human origin, and she survived, don't you?
    • bigbandbob  •  Cincinnati, Ohio  •  5 mths ago
      OK. Fine. But whose rocket did it belong to? A little investigative journalism would be helpful here. Merry Christmas everyone.
      • Paul 5 mths ago
        jounalism ? ....investigation?.....hahahahaha
      • Poor American 5 mths ago
        They will never find out whose rocket it belonged to because most likely there is only one company that makes the thing in China and shipped to every country that has a space program sending satellites into space.
    • Anonymous  •  5 mths ago
      It was only a mystery to the press and people who's only exposure to space programs was pictures of the shuttle. First time I saw the picture I thought "fuel tank, probably for hydrazine otherwise it would be made out of aluminum."
    • dillinger8381  •  5 mths ago
      "The Great Space Ball Mystery Has Been Solved"?

      "Spaceballs...?"
      "Oh @#$%. There goes the planet."
    • AimeeA  •  Norfolk, Virginia  •  5 mths ago
      NASA couldn't figure this out?
      Yet I read the same thing from a Yahoo! member's posting days ago, and he said he'd Googled it and got the answer in seconds.
      Time for NASA engineers to buy some computers with internet access!
    • Mike  •  Austin, Texas  •  5 mths ago
      The gods must be crazy is closer to this article then spaceballz
    • Mal  •  5 mths ago
      What a convoluted article... couldn't organized what you had to write about the tank a bit better or much better. Gosh.
    • Shay  •  Memphis, Tennessee  •  5 mths ago
      If the 'expert' is saying what its 'LIKELY' to be, then the mystery has NOT been solved.
    • David  •  Rochester, New York  •  5 mths ago
      real classy

      i find anytime its a story about something from space, the media and "officials" talking about, are completely "backside holes" 99 percent of the time

      and here, this writer resorts to jokes and euphemisms about "balls"

      real classy, really lends to your credibility
    • jeff  •  5 mths ago
      How many grammatical errors can you spot in the following excerpt from Grandoni's post? C'mon, Atlantic Wire-- hire some editors: "When a mysterious crusty space ball crash-landed in Namibia in November, and calls to NASA and the European Space Agency didn't get authorities any closer to pinning down what exactly had landed in their backyards, while Mel Brooks fans delighted in the nod in the 'space ball' name and the rest and ogled the astro-nut to guess at what it is. The story has been picked up widely the last few days, but now we know what it is: Gawker's Adrian Chen wrote about the 13-pound ball on Friday morning a commenter identified it..."
    • My Word....  •  5 mths ago
      Try telling the tribe in Namibia that found it that! They think it came from the sun god and are probably building a shrine around it.
    • Toy  •  Irvine, California  •  5 mths ago
      So what the hell? What if these fall on people?
    • Santiago  •  Sunnyvale, California  •  5 mths ago
      It's all a cover up, the green aliens with balls of steel are coming to get us! Run for your lives!
    • Larry  •  Elmhurst, Illinois  •  5 mths ago
      "Aught-11," not "ought 11."
    • Joe  •  5 mths ago
      I wonder if that ball hit me in the leg and crushed it,maybe i could have sued the rocket owners for a couple of million dollars for pain and suffering?Time to travel to Niambia and stand outside waiting for the next one to drop...maybe i'll get lucky!
    • Peopleunit  •  5 mths ago
      So, where's the rest of the rocket, and whose was it? Uh oh. Be careful with that thing, it looks like an egg to me!
    • John  •  San Francisco, California  •  5 mths ago
      We are no longer in the "oughts" - they were from 2000 to 2009. We are simply in "two-thousand eleven". Atlantic, you should know better.
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