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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

This is comically common, but because it has SpaceX in the name, it makes headlines.

> This is comically common, but because it has SpaceX in the name, it makes headlines.

I once had a flight from Puerto Rico to Chicago delayed because of a (SpaceX) launch at Cape Canaveral that happened exactly within the planned launch window. On the plus side, the flight was delayed just barely enough to be “safe” - we got to watch the second stage separation off in the distance just by looking out the window at whatever the 737 cruising altitude is.

I’d guess that space launches just aren’t numerous enough to bother modifying commercial aviation schedules, so they don’t (SpaceX or not). When it looks like a launch is actually going to happen and not get scrubbed, they clear a hole in the sky and then get on with their day.

Space launches have a significant impact on aviation schedules at Orlando and a massive impact on cruise schedules from Canaveral. There has been significant effort towards tightening the size of the keepout windows in both space and time.

Wow, TIL.

I wonder if the Brightline extension will cause a decrease in cruises at Canaveral and a corresponding increase at Ft. Lauderdale/Miami.

Make sense, Florida is the global launch mecca.

I agree - it is quite funny that it is getting attention. It's like a combination of Elon being on X and getting attention and SEO creating some infinite loop of everything revolving around him. Please stop.

More importantly can someone remind me what warning did the Chinese rockets provide or competitors? Not that that is a standard we should measure against.

Well, some of their chief competitors (i.e. Ariane 5) don't even do a controlled re-entry of their upper stages, so they don't issue warnings at all. They reenter anywhere on the planet at an unannounced random time and place. In a sense SpaceX is a victim of its own success here.

Falcon 9 destroys its upper stages in a controlled manner, in a deliberately chosen re-entry zone (sparsely populated ocean). Ariane 5's cryogenic upper stage can't do this: it's a liquid-hydrogen engine without a relight ability—after it turns off once, you can't reignite it a second time (for a re-entry targeting burn).

Their biggest competitor is China, who likes to drop their boosters on Chinese villages. Understandably, the villagers don't complain about this too loudly.

Context?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/24/china/china-rocket-debris-fal...

> don't complain

Because of the authoritarian government with a history of abuse, or because they're not around to complain?

SpaceX is also like 99% of all launches, so…

And with that the total number of rocket flights per year has ramped up due to SpaceX. Same thing applies to Starlink satellites "ruining" the night sky. It was a bit of an issue before, but now that there are thousands of satellites up there from one company, they're making headlines for similar reasons.

I've talked to people that live in dark areas and they've never seen anything like the Starlink satellites before. People are definitely after Elon but he really brought that on himself.

> they've never seen anything like the Starlink satellites before

By that, do you mean they can't see the starlink satellites now with their eyes, despite the number of them? Or do you mean that before they didn't see anything and now it is a problem and they are seeing things with their naked eyes?

They've never seen satellites that bright before

That's surprising, given that Iridium flares were a regular occurrence until ~5 years ago.

(They were arguably also one of the most interesting and inspiring phenomena on the sky, too. I miss them.)

Starlink satellites are only visible to the naked eye during specific circumstances for a brief period whole they're being boosted to their final orbit.

I've seen it. It's kind of cool. 8 pale, silent dots in line moving across the sky for like 3 minutes.

I'm sure they've seen airplanes flying at night with brighter lights, and louder noises than what starlink produces, so I'm not sure how this is really a problem.

> I'm sure they've seen airplanes flying at night with brighter lights, and louder noises than what starlink produces, so I'm not sure how this is really a problem.

For what its worth planes generally avoid flying through designated dark sky areas.

There aren't commercial airplanes out there. This was at Catalina Island which is ~25 miles off the California coast. There is very little light pollution. I think it's more the fear that the sky will be filled with those. I don't know how long after launch this was but it had been a repeat occurrence for multiple nights at that point.

I have zero problem finding numerous flights passing directly over Catalina island at night, or very close (within 20 miles @ 10k feet, which would be easily visible from the island).

globe.adsbexchange.com -> click the replay button, and then scrub to some random time after sunset in CA. Turn on flight tracks and set the speed to 100x to make the flights easier to identify.

Flights from major airlines coming from Alaska, Asia, and Hawaii seem to frequently fly directly over Catalina at night.

I saw them a couple of nights ago and was able to get them in a photo. You can see about 12 of them in a row.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/u978rksgjrtvusfmpt36k/IMG_896...

Saw them for the first time about a week ago (rural Minnesota) as we were going out to do evening chores. Startled me for a second until I realized what I was seeing.

If you were in Jersey, you could call them drones and people would believe you.

More like 50%. In 2024, they had 134 launches and globally, there were 259.

...which result in far less debris making its way down to earth since they commoditised the re-use of launch hardware. Had these launches been performed by ULA or Arianespace or any of the other incumbents there'd be much more debris dropping to the seabed or - in the case of Russian and Chinese launchers - to the desert (Russia) or haphazardly strewn around populated areas (China [1]).

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/chinese-rocket-crushes-house...

It's impressive how the modern tactic is to turn everyone into a victim. Even the wealthiest person in the world, who also has power even beyond their wealth - even they use the tactic.

And they've made sure to add "Elon Musk's SpaceX" either for extra SEO, or who-knows-what.

I thought you were kidding.

> Qantas says it has been forced to delay several of its flights to South Africa at the last minute due to warnings of falling debris from Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets re-entering Earth.

Leading paragraph.

Looks like it worked? Smart strategy

Could you provide evidence of that?

Amusingly I think it's great that Elon had a very public divorce with Silicon Valley. Otherwise I could easily see this having been titled "Qantas South Africa flights delayed by falling debris from Silicon Valley based SpaceX rocket" for maximum clicks.

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