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Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?

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Re: Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?

#51

Post by MaxikCZ »

notacoward wrote: post #34
imglorp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The starlink satellites are designed to burn up in the atmosphere. They do this pretty often. But there's plenty of other space junk that's not designed to burn up and should have shown up on radar.

> The starlink satellites are designed to burn up in the atmosphere. How high in the atmosphere, though? They're not likely to hit the ground, sure, but 36,000 feet isn't the ground. Second, designs fail. 432 Park was designed not to have cracking and spalling concrete, yet NYT has a story today about exactly those things. Third, people lie about designs and capabilities. Pretty sure anyone who has ever worked in com…

I pressume its much easier to design something to burn than to do anything else. You are basically just restricting yourself on material selection. The goal isnt for something to not fail, the goal is to fail. Its like asking to build a lawnmower that doesnt have to cut grass, and can look however you want. If you produce a pebble, it fits those criteria.

The atmospheric entrance for these (starlink) sattelites is basically as shallow as possible, so the object spends the most time possible in high atmosphere (think 60-90 km, where the atmo is thick enough to engulf the object in plasma, yet extert low pressure to slow it down, prolonging the time its burning. In otherwords, you couldnt achieve better parameters to burn stuff on deorbit.

All of it will probably be fully burned way before 50km - planes fly at 8-12

Re: Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?

#52

Post by sipofwater »

"Something from “space” may have just struck a United Airlines flight over Utah" "“NTSB gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data.”": https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-m... (arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-may-have-just-struck-a-united-airlines-flight-over-utah/)

Re: Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?

#53

Post by cachemoney1 »

imglorp wrote: post #40
RomanAlexander wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cool yeah neat but you can contend with the reality that it does happen right? https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-actually-dying-starlink-sa...

I was excited to see some evidence, but if you actually read the article they're talking about flakes of silicon with less than one joule of energy reaching the surface. To break an airliner windscreen, you need an energy more like a big hammer.

From the article:

> In one rare instance, the company also revealed that "a 2.5 kg piece of aluminum" found on farm grounds in Saskatchewan, Canada, was traced to a Starlink satellite.

A piece of debris of similar size to this is what I'd guess could cause the kind of damage we see in the incident involving the airliner.

So while most Starlink debris may be harmless by the time it reaches the surface, we know this doesn't always happen as expected.

And since the vast majority of reentering space debris is from Starlink satellites, that'd would be the first place I'd look.

To be totally clear, I am doubtful this is actually caused by space debris, but I don't think it's entirely unreasonable for it to be one of the most likely causes.

Re: Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?

#54

Post by 1970-01-01 »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #18

I have a paralyzing phobia of flying. I do, but It's always many hours of sheer terror. In my paranoia, I recently unlocked a new concern about air travel: what if a meteorite hits the plane? That would certainly be catastrophic. And now I've acquired a new one, space debris! Nice.

Well, this is the first time this has happened in all aviation history, and nobody died.

Re: Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?

#55

Post by sml156 »

M95D wrote: post #38

Captain's arm was injured by debris, but no decompression? How did they get past the windshield? Also, those scratchs look days old. Not a drop of blood visible. Smells like fake news.

I am more concerned with the way the left window is held on using a big paperclip

Re: Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?

#56

Post by notacoward »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #51
notacoward wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The starlink satellites are designed to burn up in the atmosphere. How high in the atmosphere, though? They're not likely to hit the ground, sure, but 36,000 feet isn't the ground. Second, designs fail. 432 Park was designed not to have cracking and spalling concrete, yet NYT has a story today about exactly those things. Third, people lie about designs and capabilities. Pretty sure anyone who has ever worked in com…

I pressume its much easier to design something to burn than to do anything else. You are basically just restricting yourself on material selection. The goal isnt for something to not fail, the goal is to fail. Its like asking to build a lawnmower that doesnt have to cut grass, and can look however you want. If you produce a pebble, it fits those criteria. The atmospheric entrance for these (starlink) sattelites is ba…

"Probably"? Even in their defense you felt a need to hedge, and that should tell you something. As another commenter has pointed out, Starlink has admitted that some components might survive re-entry. Let's not fall all over ourselves trying to give Musk and Co. more benefit of the doubt than they even give themselves.

Re: Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?

#57

Post by tzs »

foofoo12 wrote: post #23
gortok wrote: post #5

Two events each having a low probability is not the same thing as the events not happening. Despite our best efforts, folks still win the lottery, and you’re more likely to get struck by lightning than win the powerball jackpot. So while it can be extremely unlikely from a probability standpoint that this plane was stuck by space debris, and it can also be extremely unlikely that he saw it before it hit, it’s not a f…

> folks still win the lottery Yep, and: "In 1998, Bill Morgan, an Australian man from Melbourne was captured on film winning a AU$250,000 scratchcard while re-enacting his previous scratchcard win for a news report. The video of the event has since been widely shared online." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Morgan_lottery_win

That article could use some work. In the second paragraph after the one that quote is from it says:

> His dramatic change in fortune attracted local media attention, and two weeks after his first scratchcard win in May 1999, Nine News asked him to re-enact it for the B-roll footage of their news report. While being filmed scratching off another card inside the shop, he turned around, held up the ticket and said, "I just won 250,000. I'm not joking. I just won 250,000."

1998 was when he suffered a car crash followed by serious medical problems.

Re: Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?

#58

Post by MaxikCZ »

notacoward wrote: post #56
MaxikCZ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pressume its much easier to design something to burn than to do anything else. You are basically just restricting yourself on material selection. The goal isnt for something to not fail, the goal is to fail. Its like asking to build a lawnmower that doesnt have to cut grass, and can look however you want. If you produce a pebble, it fits those criteria. The atmospheric entrance for these (starlink) sattelites is ba…

"Probably"? Even in their defense you felt a need to hedge, and that should tell you something. As another commenter has pointed out, Starlink has admitted that some components might survive re-entry. Let's not fall all over ourselves trying to give Musk and Co. more benefit of the doubt than they even give themselves.

Im just a rando on the internet, Ive never inspected the sats to know if they are not using materials that just wont burn up, hence "probably".

Im just listing facts to help you make a picture, I am not trying to "defend" anyone/anything. Please try to free your political/corporate bias from ingesting new information.

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