The nation-wide grounding of American flights grabbed all the headlines yesterday, for good reason, but it wasn’t the only anomalous event on Friday the 13th.
Before the FAA mandate brought all air travel to a screeching halt, West Coast travelers experienced flight delays out of fear that falling debris from the recent SpaceX launch might damage a plane.
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The launch of Starship, SpaceX’s largest interplantery rocket yet, capable of carrying up to 100 people on long-duration flights, involved incredible feats of engineering, but also necessitated shedding incredible amounts of debris to achieve escape velocity. Much of that debris ends up in orbit, as “space junk,” but much also comes crashing down to Earth, and any problems in the launch would have likely also created significant danger, not only to air traffic but even pedestrians.
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Thankfully no harm was done and after a short delay, primarily impacting flyers out of and into Hawaii, flights resumed until the larger, nation-wide shutdown.
SpaceX’s Starship test flight concludes later this afternoon, so if you want to watch the attempted catch of the mega-rocket, here’s how you can live-stream it.