20
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.
121 dicks in Africa, 322 dicks in Asia.
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?
Donnie Darko but it's Musk's space junk instead of a jet engine.
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.
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.
OK what about a ford ranger then
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
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:
How many bananas is that?
DDG/Lucille Bluth says about 40,000-50,000 bananas.
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
There could be cubes the size of gorillas.
Is the measure in Imperial pick ups,
or metric pick ups?
Cochem mentioned! 😍
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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