Farmers find large and rare pieces of space junk in the Snowy Mountains

[Hans Tucker]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8DyEyTxhvY

Is this stuff potentially hazardous?

[Sunfish]

Sure would be hazardous if it hit your house while you were home.

[Hans Tucker]

I am actually referring to the loose fibers. We lost an composite undercarriage door from a military aircraft and a news alert went out instructing members of the public not to touch or go near if found .. just report to the Police.

[LonelySpoon]

As the pieces are probably from a pressure vessel they could now be contaminated from the contents, but they are also a carbon fibre composite which comes with its own set of safety issues much like firbreglass does.
I'd be very careful around it, and I'm a rocket freak!

Neville
LSO

[Sunfish]

Sorry. A touch of levity. ( Or the reverse ) . Surprising that the fibres are still loose at the edge after reentry. Very heat resistant carbon fibre material? A problem I think is that it is falling in large pieces over populated areas.

Get used to being bombarded from space by industrial waste.

[LonelySpoon]

Stuff like this comes mostly from upper stage, orbital insertion units that end up in low, elliptical orbits.

Even SpaceX, obviously, wastes these at the moment.

With the advent of fully reusable Starship and friends, this will likely decrease.

Lower orbit satellites are usually smaller, burning right up, middle level tend to stay there as nav hazards, higher one get moved out further to free up orbits.

There was a good Astronomycast podcast a few months ago about it.

I lived near Hoxton Park Aerodrome once. When leveling the block they unearthed the landing leg of a WWII plane. This was near where two planes collided, crashing on houses.

I'll take the odds on space junk any day!:)

[mura_gadi]

The space shuttle was cooled and left for about 20 minutes to let noxious gases from re-entry disperse. I'd leave anything that was smoking alone till it cooled.

Ps. Look at how many nukes we've dropped accidentally... that's scary!.

*Spain from a mid-air refuelling accident saw a bomber with 4 nukes onboard crash, 1 stayed onboard, 2 fell on land and exploded the arm'ers but not the nuke itself and the beach is in the news today because they want to redevelop the area despite the radioactive fallout, the last fell in the sea and took several weeks to locate.

[LonelySpoon]

What was that dreadful movie with the greatest line? something like:

"I don't know what's worse- that we've lost a nuclear weapon, or that it happens so often we've got a code word for it!"

[Hans Tucker]

Broken Arrow .... and I didn't think it was that bad. One of those leave your brain at the door movie.

[Hodur]

The Spanish incident was the most serious, a substantial release of radioactive materials. Huge covered up and if Spain hadn’t still been fascist it who have been a colossal embarrassment.
Lesson… if you’re going to inadvertently drop a nuke, drop it on a sympathetic government, you know, friends. Lol