Starship Flight 7

While the video post does mention "Right in front of us", and it may have appeared that way to the pilots, it wasn't. Gauging relative distance and altitude between aircraft in flight can be notoriously deceptive even to experts, especially in the case of intensely bright, massive, unfamiliar objects at very high speed and great distance.

The RUD was in orbit over 146 kilometers up and >13,000 mph. I'm sure using the FlightAware tracking data someone will work out the actual distance and altitude delta between that plane and the Starship 7 orbital debris. I suspect it was many dozens of miles away and probably still nearly orbital in altitude (~100km).

Spectacular light show though...

replies(3): >>42734219 #>>42734247 #>>42735763 #

1. aredox ◴[17 Jan 25 09:41 UTC] No.42735763{3}[source]▶

>>42734053 #

Stupid comment. Several flights had to be diverted because of the break-up, and anyone in flight at that time would be rightly concerned about barely-visible high-speed shrapnel showering a much larger area than where the visible debris are - especially when you are responsible for keeping your hundreds of passengers safe in a very unexpected situation with no rehearsed procedure to follow.

replies(3): >>42736355 #>>42739943 #>>42742909 #

2. pineaux ◴[17 Jan 25 11:16 UTC] No.42736355[source]▶

>>42735763 (TP) #

this.

3. stouset ◴[17 Jan 25 16:39 UTC] No.42739943[source]▶

>>42735763 (TP) #

Nobody is saying it wasn’t prudent to divert.

It would have been impossible for the pilot to know if that debris was shortly in front of them and at co-altitude or extremely far in front of them and at a significantly higher altitude.

In this case it was almost certainly the latter. But the uncertainty alone was enough to warrant diverting.

> Stupid comment.

Aim higher on HN.

4. javawizard ◴[17 Jan 25 20:27 UTC] No.42742909[source]▶

>>42735763 (TP) #

Ok, this:

> Stupid comment

got me. There's literally an HN rule about this: [0]

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

I feel like the world would be a better place if people would tone down the ad-hominem in their day-to-day discourse just a little bit.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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