Somewhere between 100 and 200 big chunks of space debris crash back into the earth every year. Oh, my!

Get used to it. The government is tracking about 9,000 objects that have piled up in space since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 in 1957. Scientists figure another 100,000 bits of debris too small to follow are floating out there that inevitably will attempt to return to Mother Earth.

That’s not even counting the tens of millions of even smaller specks of debris daring to slip through our protective atmosphere.

This is all according to Leonard David. He is the senior space writer for Space.com. This particular article ran back in September 2000. But thanks to the miracle of the Internet, you can get to it quickly by just Googling, “How many satellites enter the earth’s atmosphere annually?”

The good news is that scientists don’t consider space debris that much of a problem. Shucks, most of the stuff burns up on re-entry. Still, Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS) in El Segundo, Calif., estimates that more than 425,000 pounds of material re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in 1999, according to the Space.com article in 2000.

CORDS projects that only about 21,000 pounds actually hit terra firma because roughly three-fourths of the world is covered with water. And scientists can with some success aim the big stuff — whole satellites, for example — at unpopulated areas on the earth.

That’s very good news. Scientists estimate that the risk that an individual will be hit and injured is less than one in 1 trillion. Heck, your chances of getting hit by lightning is about one in 1.4 million, according to this article.

Now, I bring this up this morning for the very same reason I went flying off on the Internet to find out just how many satellites return to earth annually: Our military is poised to blast an experimental satellite clean out of its orbit in what the brass claims is an effort to protect human life.

The dead satellite, which went up in 2006, weighs about 5,000 pounds. It is carrying a “half-ton of hydrazine, a fuel that officials said could burn the lungs and even be deadly in extended doses,” according to The New York Times.

This is not about the U.S. firing back after China showed off its anti-satellite system by blowing up an old weather satellite. We were outraged, of course.

Does any of this sound suspicious to you? Does it sound possibly like a couple of seventh-grade boys bumping chests out behind the gym after school?

That is clearly why you and I will never be part of Congress. You see, the honorable members of this august legislative body know full well the limitations of their influence on world or even worldly affairs. Nothing else could explain the House Democrats’ decision to focus its attention on whether Cy Young award winner Roger Clemens ever juiced up with HGH (human growth hormone).

To paraphrase Capt. Renault in Casablanca, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that juicing is going on in here!”

If you take a quick glance over at the “Letters to the Editor” column this morning, Chad Gaddie gets to this point much quicker than I ever could. Chad, who is a fine attorney in town, told me that he was worried that he would come off like a cranky old man in his letter, even though he is not.

Chad did. And I should know, because I am a cranky old man. If Roger Clemens broke the law, the police or the DEA or the FDA or someone with the proper authority should file a charge, take him to court and try to win a conviction.

The House hearings instead played out this painful political dance that both parties love so much. The Democrats appeared determined to prove that Clemens is just another fat cat willing to break the law to get rich. The Republicans were happy to defend their fat cat and go after the Democrats’ lying snitch. Is anyone having fun yet, besides House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman?

I’m actually open to trying out a squirt or two of HGH since the hearings. Roger’s won not just one Cy Young Award, but seven. That’s two more than any other pitcher ever. Plus, he still pitches (when he wants — no spring training, please) at 45. We know his lovely wife, Debbie, used HGH to get ready for a Sports Illustrated photo a couple of years ago. She’s hot.

Besides, what do I have to lose? I’m 57. I could use an edge. But I don’t want to end up with a pocket of pus in my rear end if the U.S. and China are itching to start World War III. Now, that’s something Congress ought to look into.

Mark Sheehan’s column runs on Sundays and Wednesdays.