Notices by Prof. Sam Lawler (sundogplanets@mastodon.social), page 2

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.

This is the best way possible to (maybe?) end this epic thread!

Here is the story of the Saskatchewan SpaceX debris fall, written by me, published by Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacex-dropped-space-junk-on-my-neighbors-farm-heres-what-happened-next/

Many of you got to see this story unfold in real-time toots, but this is the whole thing, plus some extra science context. Extra special thank you to @NicoleCRust and @laurahelmuth for encouraging me to pitch the story to SciAm! I am so excited to publish in a magazine I read all the time as a kid.

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.

IT WAS A UHAUL

I CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Required apology is the clear frontrunner already. I can imagine how hilarious this will be... "Ok, guys, I have some delicious donuts here, but do you have something you want to say first? Perhaps say it to the TV camera over there?"

(But yes, odds are they are low-level SpaceX employees who drew the short straw and had to travel to the middle of nowhere to pick up garbage, I probably am not mean enough to withhold donuts. But we'll see how obnoxiously tech-bro they are in person...)

I brought donuts and set them up on the back of some giant farm truck. It felt like a party!

Barry had a whole bunch of family and neighbours there, and all the reporters were all excited and chatting.

I had passed a Uhaul pulled over on the side of the dirt road to the farm and I thought that had to be the SpaceX people. It's so unlikely anyone else would have a Uhaul way out in the middle of nowhere like that.

We all chatted and waited for them to navigate the muddy road in the Uhaul.

THAT WAS INCREDIBLE

ok I'll try to tone down the all caps but I'm really excited

That was so much better than I was even imagining...now I'm sitting in a library so maybe I can write it all out and share some photos. WOW.

There were journalists from Global News Regina, CBC Saskatchewan, 980 CJME, CTV Regina, the Canadian Press, CTV National, and the Ituna Times

The reporters were amazing! They shamelessly recorded as the SpaceX guys opened up the Uhaul, put on gloves, and picked up each piece one by one to load in the back (some of the pieces required both of them working together). They kept also asking questions, which were completely ignored.

It was SO AWKWARD.

Then the Uhaul arrived! There were 2 very young, very nervous looking engineers who got out and walked over to face the throng of reporters.

I had hoped they'd actually be chatty, but of course they weren't. They wouldn't even admit they were from SpaceX at first! It wasn't until the whole pack of journalists followed them across the yard asking questions that they finally admitted they were SpaceX employees. (Thanks, journalists!!)

Barry had his neighbour bring over the terrifyingly huge piece he found for a great photo op for all the journalists. That particular piece was 9 feet long, weighed 80 pounds, and was shaped like a freaking spear. It is shocking to think about that falling at terminal velocity.

I am grinning like an idiot because I was REALLY excited.

There was about 250 lbs of junk here. SpaceX has never shared how much a Crew Dragon Trunk weighs, I'd guess this is a significant fraction!

Then while they negotiated with Barry, it was time for a proper media scrum. This was pretty fun, actually, especially since I was so pumped up at this point (I was actually jumping up and down with excitement more than once as I watched reporters following the poor SpaceX dudes around). The reporters were all having a great time and happily chatting with each other. Very good vibes.

Special highlight, one of the local reporters took Astro 101 from me my first year teaching here!

At this point, the engineers were obviously trying to escape into a side room with Barry, away from the reporters.

I quickly tried to get in my one question "How much do these trunks weigh? That info isn't public" and they smiled at me and didn't answer.

I followed along as they walked to the side door with Barry and asked if they were worried about taking it across the border. One of them looked nervously at the Uhaul, smiled nervously, and walked away. Well, I tried.

So, once they were done loading, I decided to make it even more awkward by walking into the clump of reporters with the box of donuts, invitingly open. I asked nicely if they'd like any, and that broke through the ice just a little bit. They both smiled tentatively at me.

One of the journalists behind me said "It's ok, she's not a journalist, you can trust her!"

And I said, "Nope, I'm an astronomer" and I'm pretty sure my innocent smile turned positively evil.

They did not take any donuts.

Everyone filmed the Uhaul driving off once the engineers were done with their private chat with Barry, then it was time to media scrum with Barry (hats off to this guy! It took me years of practice to be comfortable with this kind of interview, and he just waltzed into it. Well done, sir! Farmers are just good at everything).

Then all the reporters gradually packed up, many writing portions of their articles on their phones while packing (impressive!), and some took a donut for the road.

Shout out to the lovely snuggly farm cat who rubbed on everyone's legs, graciously accepted pats, and then curled up for a nap on very expensive recording equipment.

Well...they played Duel of the Fates just before they quoted me about SpaceX being awful on my local CBC radio station! Wowee, that was awesome. I think it's time for me to get off the computer and snuggle goats for a while.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/spacex-cbc-debris-space-junk-sask-1.7231571

https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/c2938548-ctv-national-news--spacex-keen-on-sask--space-junk?playlistId=1.6922596