Roger Moroney: Just who will settle the bill for the new surprise from space?

Satellites often return to earth, but re-entries are controlled and the crafts usually land safely in the ocean. PHOTO/FILE

Across the goldfields of the Nullabor Plains, over there in Western Australia, there was a lot of glinting coming from the ground in the winter of 1979.

And it sure had some of the "locals" in small towns scattered across that wide and open landscape talking excitedly.

Oh they were used to coming across the occasional little fleck or grain of the golden stuff alright, but still-warm flakes and chunks of all sorts of metals was a real novelty.

Although, as they rather angrily pointed out when the dust had settled, a potentially dangerous novelty.

The old redundant Skylab, all 77 tonnes of it, had gone tumbling through the layers between earth and space and come apart - big time.

There was debris for Africa ... no, make that Australia.

The great space machine had made an unscheduled landing, as any uncontrolled entry into the earth's atmosphere on occasions can provide.

Most descents of objects we put up there into space are planned ones however, and the scientific bods can create the pathways and timelines for them.

To the point where a couple of thousand kilometres east of us there is a large swathe of isolated Pacific Ocean where larger space machines targeted for re-entry can splash and sink without creating a threat to humankind.

This aquatic landing pad is dubbed "the spacecraft cemetery".

But there was no control over that old disintegrating Skylab back in '79, and its sheer size meant some of it would come down "somewhere".

That "somewhere" was Western Australia and in particular a little town called Esperance, where one young teenager made a few grand through taking up an offer to be the first to deliver a chunk of the broken up Skylab to the newspaper which put up the offer.

He was lucky.

He'd heard about the uncertainty of where it would land (they reckoned the Indian Ocean would probably receive it) so when he heard things pelting the roof of the family home in the dead of night he would have thought "bingo!"

Yep, it was scattered across the landscape surrounding that spot, and while the locals realised it was dangerous and that a blow from a piece of it could have been fatal, they took up a marvellous Aussie approach.

The town fined the United States $400 ... for littering.

And they got the cash, although it was paid up not by President Jimmy Carter or Nasa.

A radio jock with a station in California settled the bill.

And so, this leads me to today's question.

How much will a Chinese radio station pay a town or city or individual late next year when that great land in the east is fined for littering.

Because from what I've heard they have a "Skylab moment" coming up.

And hey, we might have a "Skylight moment" too as the space wallahs over there in Beijing or wherever may leave litter in our part of the world.

It seems the Tiangong 1, China's first space laboratory, has gone out of control.
At a news conference a couple of weeks ago a director of the country's space engineering office said "most parts of the space lab will burn up during falling".

The word "most" is the critical component here.

As is the fact the officials said the space agency would release an international forecast for where the Tiangong 1 was likely to come down "at a later date".

Which basically means from where I'm sitting that they have no idea exactly when or where.

Which is what a leading astrophysicist has also said summing it up simply but noting "you really can't steer these things" and reckons when it begins it's fiery journey down there will be a matter of hours involved in discovering exactly where and when it will strike.

Oh we all love a surprise, and on that note I wonder who we will send the bill for littering to ... Hils' or Trumpy?

● On a chirpy note - I took in a delightful show the other night courtesy of the devoted teachers and enthusiastic youngsters of Arthur Miller School who put on a colourful and entertaining feature called Cinderella Rockerfella. Wow, there is some great talent there and hats off to one and all. The town cryer, the prompters with their "hiss" and "boo" boards, the ugly sisters, the witch, Cinderella and Rockerfella ... and every last member of the cast for that matter because the entire school took part. Great story, great fun and great work from everyone involved. Take another bow!