"The sky is falling, the sky is......

I was reading CNN.com tonight, and noticed this article that was tucked in behind all of the election coverage. Satellite is weeks away from hitting Earth. I read the article, about a government spy satellite which has lost power, and will be coming back to Earth in a most uncontrolled, and ungracious re-entry, and all I kept thinking was, here we go again.

I am sure most of you reading this can remember all of the media coverage, and more impressive, the level of hysteria generated by the 1979 re-entry of Skylab. This was a serious event for any and all types of people.

Those on the money making side of the industry had wagers and bets going on where, and when Skylab would makes its entrance. On the other side of the sanity scale, there were those who took out insurance policies on their homes to protect against damage from falling Skylab debris, and those that protested the entire situation by wearing Skylab hard-hats around town.
Every news cast, on every station, every day, covered the story to provide updates on where Skylab was, and more importantly, where it was going to end up.

Today, we are a different country. Today, we have become so sensory overloaded, we don't even notice it happening. Who can blame us. There's still a war going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, an election that is turning out to be a nice sound bite battle between Obama and Clinton (Bill that is...), and of course Britney still has not gotten her kids back. So, if a top secret spy satellite happens to drop out of the sky during American Idol, I doubt many people will take notice.

I guess maybe it was a simpler time back in 1979. Either that, or after Skylab, and Mir, we have learned that the sky falls on a pretty regular basis, and it doesn't actually mean the world is ending (unless you live in the Indian Ocean or remote Australia). But, I for one am going to make sure I have my hard-hat close by, just in case.