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Starship Flight 7

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649 points chinathrow | 4 comments | 16 Jan 25 21:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.809s | source
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terramex ◴[16 Jan 25 23:04 UTC] No.42732041[source]▶
Looks like second stage broke up over Caribbean, videos of the debris (as seen from ground):

https://x.com/deankolson87/status/1880026759133032662?t=HdHF...

https://x.com/realcamtem/status/1880026604472266800

https://x.com/adavenport354/status/1880026262254809115

Moment of the breakup:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE52_hVSeQz/

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TechTechTech ◴[16 Jan 25 23:11 UTC] No.42732121[source]▶
Where will this debris land? Can it impact airplane routes?
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mh- ◴[16 Jan 25 23:29 UTC] No.42732276[source]▶
https://x.com/DJSnM/status/1880032865209184354

>Commercial flights are turning around to avoid potential debris.

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ricardobeat ◴[16 Jan 25 23:40 UTC] No.42732372[source]▶
That sounds... unlikely, to say the least. The ship blew up at 145km altitude over Turks and Caicos. Debris would fall thousands of kilometers to the east, if anything survives re-entry.

EDIT: at these speeds, over 20000km/h, the falling debris will travel a very long way before coming down. For satellite re-entry, the usual estimated ground contact point is something like 8000km+ downrange [1]. There is little chance debris would come anywhere near commercial flight altitude in the area around where the videos were made.

Apparently the planned splashdown was in the Indian Ocean near Australia, but this being an uncontrolled re-entry it could be far off from that, in either direction.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457652...

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Retric ◴[16 Jan 25 23:51 UTC] No.42732458[source]▶
Arlines are extremely cautious around these kinds of one off events.

It’s not about the calculated risks, but the uncertainty around if they have the right information in the first place. Sure it may have broken up at 145km miles, but what if someone messed up and it actually was 14.5km etc.

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1. rvnx ◴[16 Jan 25 23:52 UTC] No.42732464[source]▶
Main priority to prevent accidents is to migrate away from this imperial system.
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2. mh- ◴[16 Jan 25 23:55 UTC] No.42732492[source]▶
You can forget to carry a 1 in metric, too.
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3. rvnx ◴[17 Jan 25 13:29 UTC] No.42737293[source]▶
It won't save everything will will reduce at least two possibles routes of mistake (wrong unit, or imprecise conversion).

OP wrote "km miles", which would create an incident.

SpaceX uses metric system for that exact reason, because in the past, on Mars, accident happened because of imperial measures.

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4. Retric ◴[17 Jan 25 23:04 UTC] No.42744165{3}[source]▶
Yep, the point of saying “km miles” was the hypothetical uncertainty around units even for European airlines who use metric internationally. However, even within metric might be some question around units.