Quincy Possibly In Path of Chinese Space Station Crashdown

Last August, our eyes were affixed to the skies, behind goofy glasses, to watch the total eclipse of the sun. Next week, we'll want to turn our eyes back to the skies, though not for an eclipse, but for IMPENDING DOOM possibly. I don't know. It's just based on the best guess of the smart people.

Like Skylab and Mir before it, Tiangong-1, or "Celestial Palace," the Chinese space station, is in a decaying orbit and set to crash down sometime between March 30th and April 6th.

While both Aerospace Corp and the European Space Agency are unable to pinpoint exactly when and where, current estimates put it in that one week time frame, and crashing in our general area.

The likeliest of scenarios put Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and most of Ohio directly in the path of the Tiangong-1's deorbit. And while most debris will burn up upon reentry into the Terran atmosphere, there is still the slight chance of debris crashing to Earth.

Fortunately that's not cause for alarm, as you are more likely to win the Powerball than you are to be hit by falling space debris. Still, I'd feel a bit more comfortable if a summer camp full of weird kids and a physics professor on sabbatical started rolling a polyhedral dice right about now.

OK, I wrote that last paragraph, thinking there'd be a YouTube clip of the scene from Wet Hot American Summer, but there aren't any of that. I mean, it's not a weak subplot, but it's not the strongest, so all the videos and clips are of different parts of the movie. Go watch Wet Hot American Summer on Netflix, and you'll understand the reference. And you'll have watched a freakin' hilarious movie. Watch the movie, then the prequel series "First Day of Camp," and then the sequel series "10 Years Later." In that order. Otherwise it won't make sense. But the movie is the one with the Skylab plot.

Where was I? OH! Yeah. Tiangong is crashing down and we're all going to die, or get infected by zombies, or it's really an alien creature that's going to destroy our cities or... maybe this is how the Infinity War starts.