This headline certainly caught my attention (via AP):
A discarded SpaceX rocket is on a high-speed collision course with the moon
WHAT.
The moon is not your trash dump, Elon.
The rocket’s upper stage will unintentionally slam into the moon on Wednesday, carving out a crater and sending up a plume of dust and rubble that scientists — and skygazers — are eager to observe.
These people are @$$holes. I am equally eager to observe the moon in a tranquil, undisturbed state, without any plumes of dust and rubble blasting out of it.
Nevertheless, Elon’s 40-foot, 10,000 pound chunk of junk will be smashing into the moon at 5,400 mph, leaving an impact crater almost 90 feet across and 16 feet deep.
That’s just what the moon needs: another impact crater.
It was never SpaceX’s intent to hit the moon. But space experts said the crash could have been avoided if the upper stage had been nudged into orbit around the sun.
Yeah, Elon. You were supposed to bomb the sun.
Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory told the AP, “Part of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts.”
Then I would suggest keeping Elon and his malfunctioning space toys far away from the moon.
Perhaps more alarming than that, someone at the Associated Press actually wrote this sentence:
With the moon as the new travel hot spot, scientists said it’s crucial to improve debris monitoring and traffic control before packs of robots and astronauts arrive.
I… just… the moon is “the new travel hot spot?” THE MOON. Are AP writers now shooting up ketamine with Elon? And apparently we’re gonna need space junk traffic controllers to be on the lookout, before the marauding “packs of robots and astronauts arrive.”
Holy shit. Am I in a k-hole?
“This impact will not be a problem,” retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said in an email. “But in a future where there are long-term bases on the moon, similar impacts would be an issue and we need not to leave rocket stages in chaotic orbits of this kind.”
Gosh ya think, Jonathan? Maybe the moon can get a restraining order against Elon.
NASA hurled rocket sections and lunar modules into the moon during the Apollo era for seismic measurements. Decades later, in 2009, NASA intentionally crashed its LCROSS spacecraft and upper stage in search of ice near the lunar south pole.
Oh. So I guess the moon is NASA’s trash dump.
Then let me be crystal clear: Elon needs to fuck all the way off, far away from NASA’s moon trash dump.
We don’t need to go to the Moon to “figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts” — there’s plenty of debris orbiting Earth that we can observe.
You’re about 4.5 billion years too late for that. We appreciate the lunar highlands we have left. Y’know, when multiple objects, manmade or not, aren’t slamming into them. SpaceX is peanuts compared to The Big Ones.
Crashing into the sun would take way more delta-V than dropping it into a near-Earth orbit. More fuel than that stage has without an in-orbit refill.
Another thing that’s crashing: spacex stock value.
All excellent points.
So beholder, what you’re saying is, it would be much easier to catapult Elon into the moon than it would be to fire him directly into the sun. Hmmm. I guess I could live with that. I would NOT trust him in near-Earth orbit, tho.
Meh, this is seriously no big deal. Asteroids and meteroids regularly impact our Moon and NASA and other space agencies have previously impacted many probes and rocket stages ontothe lunar surface as well. It isn’t new and its only going to make another small crater which occurs all the time.
NASA will attemp to observe it as noted here :
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/commercial-space/nasa-will-attempt-to-observe-rocket-parts-lunar-impact/
Whilst there’s live tracking here by Pmpety Obervatory :
@ ^ Pompey observatory that is, sorry.
FWIW gather the impact is 2.35 am presumably USA time. Just herad an hour & 12 mins or so. Also SpaceMog has a great clip on this here :
After time of impact now and no sign of anything dramatic or at all. Not surprised given the scale of booster vs Moon and lack of oxygen and fuel remaining in the rocket stage.
There’s probly an extra small crater added to the “magnificent desolation” as Buzz Aldrin described it but even finding it among all the others is going to be hard.
.***
@ Iris Vander Pluym :
Hé’d be fine and NOT cause any trouble there – providing he was without a spacesuit or oxygen! ;-)
FYI “Beholder” here is a bad faith Trump helping troll who spent years including esp during the final free and fair~ish USoA election attacking the Democratic party and thereby helping Trump and Musk. Something they continue to do and refuse to apologise for just so you know.
StevoR: Thanks for the links, thoughtful suggestions regarding where best to fling Elon, and the heads-up re: beholder. As long as our guest behaves reasonably here, I’ll allow their comments; one toe over the line, though, and I’ll either block or mock at my discretion.
I have a long-winded, point-missing, double-poster on another thread now who goes by John Malone. Unfortunately, you can’t pick your fans or your foes, and sometimes it’s difficult to know which they are.