Notices by Prof. Sam Lawler (sundogplanets@mastodon.social), page 5

I'm going to talk about Saskatchewan space junk at the @SummerSchool conference. This will be fun :)

Well, SpaceX is definitely very good at getting very large pieces of spacecraft down to ground level. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-international-space-station-us-deorbit-vehicle/

@shadow totally agree

Ooo nice I got angry, insulting emails from an Elon-bro (yes, multiple emails from one Elon-bro). Guess maybe these articles are reaching people?

Just put on my Professor Sweater (TM) to do a quick CBC interview about Starlink reentries destroying the ozone layer. I made sure to heavily reference the giant pieces of SpaceX debris that landed near me as evidence that they need better oversight and regulation.

I still don't know if this "offiical NASA statement" twitter screenshot thing is real or not, and none of my space policy friends know either! This is... so weird.

It looks like maybe SpaceX has just publicly admitted (via NASA) that they have a debris problem. So much of a problem that they have set up a debris reporting hotline!! (I am sooo tempted to call it - but I'm sure they wouldn't answer any of my questions either)

I tried searching for this statement from NASA but the only source seems to be a screenshot of text on twitter (that a journalist sent me)

(...could it be a prank? That would be a *hilarious* prank)

Ooo this one's pretty good too, includes the cat rubbing her face on the space junk, but no mention of the donuts! https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6420052

Hey, finally made it into an American news story! So far, SpaceX has not contacted the people in North Carolina who found SpaceX debris. Interesting. I hope that news stories like this will push them to take some responsibility here!

https://wlos.com/news/local/professor-spacexs-lack-of-accountability-for-space-debris-frustrating-nasa-samantha-lawlwer-university-of-regina-saskatchewan-canada

The reporter emailed me back! It's a screenshot of an email that NASA public affairs sent to him.

So, except for the Australia junk in 2022, SpaceX has still not publicly admitted to any of the Crew Dragon trunk debris falls. But apparently NASA thinks they have admitted to all of it. INTERESTING.

I finally just went ahead and emailed the reporter who posted the screenshotted text on twitter to see if he can point me to where the original official statement is posted. I am so curious to know if it's real or not... that is the ONLY public acknowledgement I've seen that the Saskatchewan space junk belongs to SpaceX.

Why am I getting so many Planet 9 interview requests all of a sudden?!

Ok interview set up with reporter in Atlanta for tomorrow to talk about North Carolina and Saskatchewan space junk, talk request from an amateur astronomy group in Maryland, Planet 9 interview request from Astronomy magazine, another Planet 9 interview for Thursday. (And talking about Planet 9/Kuiper Belt in a couple hours). I guess it's not ALL Planet 9, just feels like it.

In case it's not clear, both of these options are bad.

"Fully demisable" = 29 tons of aluminum per day in the stratosphere/mesosphere just from reentering Starlink sats, ignoring all the rocket bodies required to resupply the constantly-replaced megaconstellation.

And I hope it's obvious why 100 pound pieces of junk dropping from orbit every hour would probably be bad. So hopefully Starlink engineering is better than Crew Dragon trunk engineering?

This is such an incredibly bad situation...

Worst part of updating my talk: looking up how fucking many more Starlink satellites there were than last time I gave a version of this talk. 200 more than a month ago. Fuck.

There are now 6,209 Starlinks in orbit, fully 62% of the 10,009 active satellites in orbit.

All of these "fully demisable" Starlinks are planned to burn up and deposit their metal in Earth's atmosphere. I just saw multiple 100-pound pieces of another SpaceX "fully demisable" rocket, so I'm sure it'll be just fine.

A big, beautiful thunderstorm rolled through earlier, the densest part ended up passing a ways to the south of us. The weird part was that I got an emergency tornado warning (I think through my cell service provider), but my partner didn't, and there was no warning through the official province-wide alert app. Why did my service provider think that I deserved a warning but nobody else did?? (There was no tornado, it barely even rained here)

My apparently extremely jaded 12-year-old is now trying to convince me that it's probably an ad for something. "You'd be surprised how far some ads go!"

This is simultaneously hilarious and super depressing that my kid expects this kind of lie from any electronic device. Ouch.

Ok my phone just did it AGAIN. There is definitely no tornado here. What is happening...

...IF wherever I can order from actually ships to rural PO boxes, that is... (I've had that complaint on here before too - I don't have an address! I only have a PO box. That's how most of rural Canada works, and yet, a large fraction of companies won't ship to PO boxes. So dumb...)

Ooof so much mundane complaining this morning. I promise I'll get back to goats, cheese, and SpaceX shitposting soon.

Once I'm done with this batch of cheese (and washing dishes, dammit) I'll get back to this. From a bunch of reading and youtube videos, I think the circulation pump died. Going to try taking that out once I find hose clamps to replace the ones I'm going to have to destroy to get it out, try cleaning it and putting it back together. If it still doesn't run, I can order a new circulation pump for $90ish and try that in a few days when it arrives.

Special thank you to everyone who posts questions and answers on good old-fashioned web forums, and people who make and post repair videos.

Did I get any help from chatGPT or other stupid energy-sucking things like that? No. Would it have been helpful? Also no. I got help from people here, and from questions random people asked and answered years ago.