Probabilistic Fitts' Law and the Likelihood of the Tunguska Type of Event

Published In

Journal of Space Safety Engineering

Document Type

Citation

Publication Date

2023

Abstract

An analogy with the recently suggested probabilistic interpretation of the Fitts' law in the theory of human-computer interactions (HCI) is employed in this analysis to assess the likelihood that a Tunguska type meteorite hits Earth. Two extreme cases are considered: (1) a big asteroid travels within the solar system still far away from Earth (the probabilistic Fitts' law reduces in such a situation to the well-known exponential law of reliability) and (2) the asteroid has become a meteorite and is approaching Earth (the complete double-exponential probabilistic Fitts' law is employed in such a case). The addressed analogy can be used, in addition to other efforts, to design, conduct and interpret an inexpensive, but, of course, highly tentative HCI-theory-based imitation viewed as analogous to the vital space safety related problem.

DOI

10.1016/j.jsse.2022.12.006

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/41249

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