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Half the size of a pickup truck? So like, a normal car?
More like 1/3 the size of a zambonie. Or 11/3 the size of two penguins on a foosball table.
Whats that in Rhode Islands? And how about mass, can I get that measured in bigmacs?
129 / 4.307213e+10 = 2.9949761 x 10^-9
That's in sq ft. Rounded. Length x width of a pickup truck divided by surface area of Rhode Island as reported on Wikipedia
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How many dachshunds is that?
Eighteen Danny DeVitos
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Oh thank God... We almost had to use the metric system there didn't we?
We were within a hair's breadth of that awful fate.
within a hair's breadth
squints eyes
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Are all imperial hair bigger, or only Texas ones?
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We almost had to mention standard cars, which are also half the size.
Americans don't drive cars, so they don't know how big they might be.
A car?? Is that some kind of libural version of my furd f300000 king ranch pedestrian killer edition truck?
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Is the measure in Imperial pick ups,
or metric pick ups?
Cochem mentioned! 😍
Yep, they are in Low Earth Orbit. A place that has a very, very small amount of air, so the satellites experience drag, lose speed, eventually the propellant tanks run dry, and they burn up in the atmosphere. The ISS experiences the same thing, which is why its altitude slowly falls, then you see a sharp increase as they push to a slightly higher orbit.
At the altitude the SpaceX satellites are at, they only passively stay up for a few years. With the onboard propulsion giving them each another few years.
How does half a pickup truck compare to a large boulder the size of a small boulder?
Large boulder is a state of mind. It achieved an awful lot that day and was feeling especially pleased with itself thus the honorific.
Please let one land on my house so I can sue SpaceX and retire early.
One fell in a farmer's field in Saskatchewan. Dude got a hassle, some publicity, and a nominal fee of a grand or something.
edit: here's a mastodon thread where astronomer Sam Lawler lives nearby and visits the site with media:
It wasn't from a starlink satellite though.
which the U.S. aerospace company SpaceX later admitted was part of a cargo trunk for its Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Cool thanks!
A grand? Then I'm keeping it. I can make more as a roadside tourist attraction. Or maybe I sell it to the Chinese or Bezos or something. You want your toy back, Musk? Pay up, you cheap bastard!
I don't remember that happening. I would actually be surprised if a satellite would survive reentry with basically anything left of it. If you want to return something from orbit you need heat shield or you're not getting it back.
Even the ISS is expected to completely burn up and that's much higher mass than a starlink satellite
"act of God", legalese for "fuck you".
Donnie Darko but it's Musk's space junk instead of a jet engine.
Welp, it’s been fun. Time to IPO and unload all the liabilities onto the public.
Complaining about Kressler Syndrome
Complaining about Starlink
Pick one, asshole. As shitty as Musk is, Starlink is in too low of an orbit to cause Kressler Syndrome
Every time somebody mentions Kessler syndrome they always seem to forget that low earth orbit is an area literally bigger than the earth's surface. There's about 10,000 of them and they are spread out over an area bigger than the surface of the earth. Meanwhile there are way more than 10,000 trucks in the world and apparently they are twice the size, and yet there are huge swaths of land that do not currently have a truck on them. I think we'll be okay.
Although I do accept they are probably irritating for astronomers.
Collisions aren't theoretical, near misses are so common that there's an entire department at NASA dedicated to detecting them and warning satellite owners to adjust course, I know because we were contacted about a possible collision involving our cubesat. Prior to megaconstellations being deployed if humanity stopped adjusting satellite orbits there would be a collision within a month, now there would be a collision within 5 days. It's only a matter of time until both satellites on a collision course don't have the ability to adjust course (engine failure or no propulsion/fuel/comms). In the event of a Carrington-style solar flare there's a good chance a decent percentage of satellites would be knocked out, making this hypothetical into a reality. Further, we can only currently track objects down to about 10cm, but NASA estimates suggest about 500,000 objects exist between 1-10cm in size in LEO.
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How many bananas is that?
DDG/Lucille Bluth says about 40,000-50,000 bananas.
always $ in the banana stand
Half the size of a pickup truck… a Mazda compact, or a jacked up GMC Hemi half ton?
Even just saying Ford F150 gives a lot of leeway.
They're about the size of a large flat screen TV. I have no idea why they reached the pickup trucks, they might have the width but they're only a couple of inches thick. A flat screen is a much better analogy.
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Where I live, we have pickup trucks half the size of pickup trucks.
Is this not part of the plan. I seem to recall they are designed to entirely burn up on reentry.
Yeah this is by design. Beats the alternative of having every starlink satellite ever launched hanging around low Earth orbit long after it stops working.
Yeah
There could be cubes the size of gorillas.
Yeah that's what happens to absolutely everything in Low Earth Orbit in just a few years. Well, unless you keep pushing them back up like we do to the International Space Station.
These satellites are doing exactly what they're intended to do. These are actually pretty small satellites overall, there are a lot up there quite a bit larger that deorbit and burn up on re-entry just fine as well.
That's part of the reason things are sent to LEO specifically, because their orbits naturally degrade and they naturally deorbit themselves without needing any assistance or fuel. It also means if a satellite in LEO fails quicker than planned, is put in an incorrect orbit due to a launch issue, or just failed prematurely, it will fail-safe and deorbit without any assistance.
return to sender
preferably on his head
That would be so hilarious. People would be drinking beer and laughing at the story 100 years later.
Privatizing space sure did make things more efficient, puh-raise JEE-zuz-ah!
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this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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