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Comment by jarofgreen | Hacker News Reader

Was I the only person who read the headline and thought "Wait, was it meant to?". The word "falls" has very negative connotations and could have been chosen better surely? :-)

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The incidence of headline editing (vs using the original headline) seems to be on the rise. This original article didn't have the greatest headline either: "SpaceX Dragon ship aims for Earth" but would have been better and slightly more accurate. Dragon had not begun its fall when this was submitted.

Agreed. Especially since all that stuff that's in orbit around us (like the ISS and Dragon) is falling all the time. They just happen to be going at the right speed to just keep from actually coming down.

The ISS is constantly falling, by about 90 metres a day. They have to periodically boost it back up to a higher orbits. And pretty much everything up there is actually falling all the time and would come down without corrective action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17630218/ns/technology_and_scien...

Oddly enough if it did just fall, relative to the Earth's rotation, instead of slam into the atmosphere at thousands of meters per second it would be less stressful on the capsule.

Though, if the angle of re-entry is too shallow, it would skip off the atmosphere (like a rock would across water).

And if Earth is this basketball, and the Odyssey CM is this baseball, they have to hit a re-entry interface no thicker than this piece of computer paper.

(At least that's what Apollo 13 [the movie] said.)

"Returns to Earth" would have been accurate and rather less sensational.

Chosen better for what? They certainly chose a good title to get people to click...

They certainly chose a good title to get people to click...

And I'd like to keep "get people to click" type of content away from HN.

We tend to frown upon sensationalism here; it tends to correlate positively with bullshit.

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