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Comment by gnabgib | Hacker News Reader

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It was a weather balloon, not space debris, that struck a United Airlines plane (12 points, 1 day ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45652120

United MAX Hit by Falling Object at 36,000 Feet (402 points, 3 days ago, 225 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45636285

Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday? (36 points, 3 days ago, 56 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45633191

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Interesting that it was an ai-tech weather balloon that hit the plane at 36,000 ft and not space debris like originally assumed! Very fortunate that cabin pressure was maintained, there were no other major systems malfunctions and the aircraft was able to land safely in Salt Lake City.

Kind of crazy that even a lightweight object like a weather balloon imparts enough force to crack open a cockpit window. The 30,000-40,000 ft range is pretty heavily occupied by commercial airliners so having AI weather balloons floating around at those altitudes in a flight path seems pretty risky without real-time coordination with air traffic control.

Imagine if this happened at night, or in a thunderstorm or fog etc where they couldn't immediately land safely, might have been a lot worse.

It made more sense after seeing one of the pics posted of the ballast that is basically a bag of sand.

https://xcancel.com/DJSnM/status/1980433951551533203#m

The other interesting thing is that these airliners follow common waypoints as if they are sky highways. It seems like it would be easy to avoid this airspace. Example: https://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/summer11articles/summer11g...

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