There was only one place for it to go ... and that was down.
And this is where I became intrigued ... but not surprised.
Here was a remarkable object which had been sent up through our layers of atmosphere by a rocket which knew exactly how high to take it, and exactly when and where to release it.
That's pretty remarkable, given I still have problems occasionally reversing up the driveway.
The calculations and computations must have been pinpoint.
This big multi-million dollar satellite had to be set forth from exactly the right spot.
Which was done, and that was dandy.
But of course time is no friend to machinery, regardless of how much planning and research and cash is thrown at it.
The day always comes when its clutch will fail, or whatever it was that consigned that 20-year-old satellite to a fiery fate.
I remember quite a few years back when a redundant piece of space traffic (was it the Skylab) was forecast to come hurtling across the clear Bay skies at a certain time on its final falling path.
And the Nasa boys were spot on.
We went out to Hardinge Rd, parked up with fish and chips, and waited for it.
Right on time it appeared in the fading blue light of an approaching dusk.
A fast, bright light ... on its way to its final resting spot "somewhere" around Easter Island they reckoned.
Not so hot on the exact destination but they got the time spot on.
I wondered then, and I've wondered again lately ... if they can put that stuff up there with pinpoint accuracy why can't they sort of work out exactly where it's going to come down?
Even better, why can't they press a button and blast the thing off into the endless landscape of space somewhere out toward Uranus. Now forgive me, and I know it's infantile, but I've only used that planet as an example because I've got a $5 bet going that I can drop that word into a story somewhere.
But I digress.
There is a lot of stuff up there, and it keeps coming down.
More often than you think.
I spoke to a very learned astronomer a couple of months back and he said we here in the Bay are sitting in what could only be called the best spectator seats in the house in terms of catching sight of falling flotsam (and the occasional chunk of jetsam).
Mainly military stuff, and some of it the boffins at the base bunkers under Utah or wherever can pretty well aim to a certain isolated spot ... because they don't want anyone finding bits of them.
There's a very big ocean out there to the east ... it is deep and vast. The perfect burial ground for exhausted and secretive military hardware.
I also heard about space debris being found from time to time on the beaches along the eastern coastline. Frizzled and fried and frazzled-up blobs of metal.
A couple of years back I interviewed a woman who, when living up the coast where she grew up, was startled one day to see a bolt of flame going fast across the sky and watched as it hammered into the ground. She still has bits of it. Chunks of molten, and baked, aluminium ... from a human-built device once sent into orbit.
They can put them up where they like, but they have no idea where they will come down.
Just "somewhere" and they add reassuring words like "isolated" and "unlikely".
How the hell did they ever get those guys back from the moon and touch them down within sight of the recovery ship?
My advice?
Just let the hedgehogs go for it ... it's too dangerous out.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
