A year ago this week, a SpaceX Starship rocket exploded over the Caribbean, something that Elon Musk’s rockets tend to do. The debris from the explosion forced dozens of commercial planes to maneuver quickly out of the affected airspace. Disaster was averted, but that doesn’t mean it will be next time:
For airplanes traveling at high speeds, there is little margin for error. Research shows as little as 300 grams of debris—or two-thirds of a pound—“could catastrophically destroy an aircraft,” said Aaron Boley, a professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied the danger space objects pose to airplanes. Photographs of Starship pieces that washed up on beaches show items much bigger than that, including large, intact tanks.
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The Mars Delusion
“Establishing a human colony on Mars is fraught with risk. Why are so many people obsessed with achieving it?”
The Zombie Regulator
“As the cost of living continues to spiral upward, the Trump Administration is gutting the government agency built to protect Americans from financial ruin.”
Baby-Making on Mars
“In the depths of the Cold War, scientists from the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. joined forces to answer a still-urgent question: Can mammals reproduce in space?”
