SpaceX debris crashed onto Canadian farmland, highlighting a potential disaster

Some statements from NASA:<p>&gt; After the more recent debris sightings, NASA and SpaceX now acknowledge that improvements are needed. The agency recently stated that initial studies expected the trunk to burn up fully upon reentry. “NASA and SpaceX will continue exploring additional solutions as we learn from the discovered debris,” NASA stated. “We did analysis back before Demo-2 and clearly the models don’t deal with the trunk very well,” Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, said in an interview after a Starliner briefing ahead of that mission’s June 6 launch. He said it’s likely because of the composite materials used in the trunk. “It’s almost like a thermal protection system.” The solution he said NASA and SpaceX are looking at involves changing deorbiting procedures. Currently, the trunk is released before the capsule performs its orbit burn. That means the trunk can remain in orbit for months before making an uncontrolled reentry. Instead, Stich said engineers are examining doing the deorbit burn and then releasing the trunk. That would provide more control of where the trunk reenters, ensuring that any debris that survives reentry lands in unpopulated regions. “We’re in the process of doing that work right now,” he said. “I would love to have something in place next year if we can, but we’ve got to do all the right analysis. We’ve got make sure that it’s safe for the crew.”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spacenews.com&#x2F;nasa-and-spacex-studying-ways-to-mitigate-dragon-trunk-debris&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spacenews.com&#x2F;nasa-and-spacex-studying-ways-to-mitig...</a>

Since this topic often leads up to discussion about Starlink debris, and since one of the authors on this piece has a well known bias against SpaceX in particular, it should be emphasized that this a Dragon specific issue, several dozen Starlink satellites have deorbited over the past years with zero associated debris having survived intact to the surface.<p>And since it&#x27;s probably also going to come up, the other recent case of debris hitting a house in IIRC Florida, those were batteries from the ISS that were intended to be brought down in a controlled manner via a cargo vehicle, but due to delays and it becoming unsafe to keep the batteries at the station, NASA had to take the risk of uncontrolled disposal despite expecting that some debris might not be fully vaporized on the way down.<p>While there is an issue of setting standards for reentering debris, while Samantha would love for you to believe SpaceX in particular, and NASA are behaving negligently, they&#x27;ve been leading the pack on figuring out the appropriate standards, with the Dragon trunk survivals being an abnormality that didn&#x27;t fit with their models. Same goes with things like reducing the brightness of their satellites.

Fun fact 1:<p>Elon has repeatedly said that Earth is vastly under populated, and that, if you drop an anvil from a plane there ja pretty much zero chance of it hitting a human. Seems like what used to be a thought experiment of his has now been executed.<p>Fun fact 2:<p>Saskatchewan, where the debris came down, is where Elon actually spent quite a bit of time doing farm work before he came to the United States.

What is the definition of &quot;disaster&quot;?<p>I would say a potential tragedy. Disaster is not going to happen.

Yes, there is a risk, just like every other activity in the human society. Since currently the risk is so small as to be unmeasurable, I refuse to worry about it and don&#x27;t really understand why we need a conversation about this - other than purely political &quot;company X does a bad thing&quot;.