Qantas South Africa flights delayed by falling debris from SpaceX rockets
This is comically common, but because it has SpaceX in the name, it makes headlines.
> This is comically common, but because it has SpaceX in the name, it makes headlines.
I once had a flight from Puerto Rico to Chicago delayed because of a (SpaceX) launch at Cape Canaveral that happened exactly within the planned launch window. On the plus side, the flight was delayed just barely enough to be “safe” - we got to watch the second stage separation off in the distance just by looking out the window at whatever the 737 cruising altitude is.
I’d guess that space launches just aren’t numerous enough to bother modifying commercial aviation schedules, so they don’t (SpaceX or not). When it looks like a launch is actually going to happen and not get scrubbed, they clear a hole in the sky and then get on with their day.
Space launches have a significant impact on aviation schedules at Orlando and a massive impact on cruise schedules from Canaveral. There has been significant effort towards tightening the size of the keepout windows in both space and time.
Wow, TIL.
I wonder if the Brightline extension will cause a decrease in cruises at Canaveral and a corresponding increase at Ft. Lauderdale/Miami.
I agree - it is quite funny that it is getting attention. It's like a combination of Elon being on X and getting attention and SEO creating some infinite loop of everything revolving around him. Please stop.
More importantly can someone remind me what warning did the Chinese rockets provide or competitors? Not that that is a standard we should measure against.
Well, some of their chief competitors (i.e. Ariane 5) don't even do a controlled re-entry of their upper stages, so they don't issue warnings at all. They reenter anywhere on the planet at an unannounced random time and place. In a sense SpaceX is a victim of its own success here.
Falcon 9 destroys its upper stages in a controlled manner, in a deliberately chosen re-entry zone (sparsely populated ocean). Ariane 5's cryogenic upper stage can't do this: it's a liquid-hydrogen engine without a relight ability—after it turns off once, you can't reignite it a second time (for a re-entry targeting burn).
Their biggest competitor is China, who likes to drop their boosters on Chinese villages. Understandably, the villagers don't complain about this too loudly.
Context?
SpaceX is also like 99% of all launches, so…
And with that the total number of rocket flights per year has ramped up due to SpaceX. Same thing applies to Starlink satellites "ruining" the night sky. It was a bit of an issue before, but now that there are thousands of satellites up there from one company, they're making headlines for similar reasons.
I saw them a couple of nights ago and was able to get them in a photo. You can see about 12 of them in a row.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/u978rksgjrtvusfmpt36k/IMG_896...
I've talked to people that live in dark areas and they've never seen anything like the Starlink satellites before. People are definitely after Elon but he really brought that on himself.
Starlink satellites are only visible to the naked eye during specific circumstances for a brief period whole they're being boosted to their final orbit.
I've seen it. It's kind of cool. 8 pale, silent dots in line moving across the sky for like 3 minutes.
I'm sure they've seen airplanes flying at night with brighter lights, and louder noises than what starlink produces, so I'm not sure how this is really a problem.
There aren't commercial airplanes out there. This was at Catalina Island which is ~25 miles off the California coast. There is very little light pollution. I think it's more the fear that the sky will be filled with those. I don't know how long after launch this was but it had been a repeat occurrence for multiple nights at that point.
I have zero problem finding numerous flights passing directly over Catalina island at night, or very close (within 20 miles @ 10k feet, which would be easily visible from the island).
globe.adsbexchange.com -> click the replay button, and then scrub to some random time after sunset in CA. Turn on flight tracks and set the speed to 100x to make the flights easier to identify.
Flights from major airlines coming from Alaska, Asia, and Hawaii seem to frequently fly directly over Catalina at night.
> I'm sure they've seen airplanes flying at night with brighter lights, and louder noises than what starlink produces, so I'm not sure how this is really a problem.
For what its worth planes generally avoid flying through designated dark sky areas.
> they've never seen anything like the Starlink satellites before
By that, do you mean they can't see the starlink satellites now with their eyes, despite the number of them? Or do you mean that before they didn't see anything and now it is a problem and they are seeing things with their naked eyes?
They've never seen satellites that bright before
That's surprising, given that Iridium flares were a regular occurrence until ~5 years ago.
(They were arguably also one of the most interesting and inspiring phenomena on the sky, too. I miss them.)
More like 50%. In 2024, they had 134 launches and globally, there were 259.
And they've made sure to add "Elon Musk's SpaceX" either for extra SEO, or who-knows-what.
Looks like it worked? Smart strategy
I thought you were kidding.
> Qantas says it has been forced to delay several of its flights to South Africa at the last minute due to warnings of falling debris from Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets re-entering Earth.
Leading paragraph.
Amusingly I think it's great that Elon had a very public divorce with Silicon Valley. Otherwise I could easily see this having been titled "Qantas South Africa flights delayed by falling debris from Silicon Valley based SpaceX rocket" for maximum clicks.
The solution here is for Spacex to tighten up their planned reentry corridors. At this point they should have more than enough experience in their ops to narrow down the likely debris field to a narrow strip that can be easily flown around instead of the huge swath of Indian Ocean they'd been allowing for.
It's for the starship test flights. Given the nature of the program, the areas are currently "large":
It says they had to delay several flights over a period of a few weeks. Starship isn’t flying anywhere near that often. These are routine Falcon 9 flights and they should be able to have very tight windows in time and space.
My reading is that SpaceX was loose with their windows because it’s easier and they didn’t think it mattered in a remote part of the ocean. Now that there’s an actual reason, they’ll probably tighten it up.
Don't they typically dispose of falcon 9 second stages over the Indian Ocean? That would be happening much more often than test flights.
Second stage and satellite disposal target is typically Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean, 2688 kilometers away from the Pitcairn Islands, Easter Islands and Antarctica.
Nobody is flying or sailing at Point Nemo. The keepout zone typically has a massive 1000km diameter, but approximately 0 impact on anybody.
Second stages definitely are getting dropped elsewhere, commonly the southern Indian Ocean, as well. Point Nemo doesn't always or even often line up with the target orbit, and you can't keep second stages in space for extended periods of time, because the propellant needed to deorbit boils off.
Those probably already have the tight reentry corridor the parent comment requests
Remember that part of the current testing program includes testing whether or not they can reliably relight their engines on orbit in order to do things like a controlled re-entry. Given the nature of that testing I imagine there's very little room for narrowing their re-entry corridors. If the test succeeds they may re-enter earlier and if it fails they'll re-enter later... or laterally different... either way lighting up the engines for the test probably changes the trajectory of the spacecraft.
The one thing they can do is be sure the original trajectory that gets them to space intersects the Earth within some reason so that if things don't go as planned it doesn't go too far afield.
At best this article is a complaint about communication of whether or not a launch is happening. And even that's hard to really do reasonably: weather, maybe a stuck valve during the countdown, maybe a leisure boat close to the launch site enters the exclusion area... all of those things have happened and prompted changes in launch times and many of those things are outside of SpaceX control.
So seems to me you can lock up the airspace on a "just in case" basis with lots of advanced warning but also reserving lots of time that you won't really need in the end... you know... just in case... , or lock it up much less, but at the cost of relatively short notice to others that might want to use it. Either way you'd still get the article protesting... it's just the complaint would be different.
The solution here is for them to nail landings. This is a temporary problem during testing. Hopefully there will only be one or two more launches that reenter over the Indian Ocean before they start landing the ship at the launch pad instead.
They will be tightening them as the starship program continues. It's just still in a testing stage right now.
I also want to point out SpaceX still does a better job than some competitors (ahem, ariane, which gets a pass because it's the eurocrat's baby therefore must be good)
Their last few rentries have been extremely tight, doing simulated landings on the water right next to a prepositioned camera buoy. The position of the buoy is almost certainly less precise than the rocket itself.
This is only for Starship testing. The issue should go away very soon, after at most a few more Starship tests.
In such cases: would airlines be entitled to compensation from the companies blocking their operations? Or do they just have to deal with it?
Is it typical that anyone gets compensated for a temporary road closure? From what I understand this is one of the safest areas for space debris to re-enter, so likely it's justified and just part of having both spaceflight and aviation industries.
NOTAMs are all over the place for all sorts of reasons. This is a "deal with it" scenario.
Sounds like tracking would help. If the re-entry is controlled, why not broadcast transponder info from the reentering parts so they appear on airplane displays? Then they can adjust course, just as they do any other aircraft in their flight path.
The south indian ocean is the re-entry site for the 2nd stage of their next starship flight test, which will (should) re-enter in one piece so the risk of falling debris is certainly not trivial and unfortunately the size of the hazard region is also not trivial.
They've rescheduled a few times now and each time operators flying in this region have to shuffle things around.
They're also going to deploy several fake starlink sats which will re-enter in the same area but with no control AFICT so those will cover more area.
Are they maybe small enough to disintegrate before reaching human altitudes?
Normal starlinks are built like that and it is not easy. Could be just not worth it for one-off mass simulators.
Plasmas are going to block the signals for at least some of the phases.
Yes and also, these parts are not made for pristine reentry, it's very likely they'll split up in different parts. How do you make sure every part has a transponder and it doesn't burn up?
Last launch had no blackout period, why would this one?
How is this debris tracked – NORAD?
The odds of damage are essentially 0 even if there was no diversion. The background risk of a plane crashing with mechanical failures may dwarf this risk.
It's hard to emphasize how comically vast the region described is. Its like... shooting two marbles across Manhattan and colliding.
This is only for Starship testing and should go away as an issue after a few more Starship tests.
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/QFA63/history/202501...
This is one of the more remote flights humanity operates. What even are the diversion points on this route, McMurdo airfield?
I'm not an Elon shrill but this seems as an ideal place for SpaceX to be re-entering things as they can choose with minimal damage to ecosystems.
I know you're not exactly serious, but to answer anyway: McMurdo isn't near this flight path, it's at New Zealand's longitude (so 2000 miles east of Australia) and much farther south. Perth would be the closest airport for almost all of that flight path.
(Your core point is correct, this trajectory is about as remote as SpaceX can possibly get, even if it's near a small number of flights. Let's not extend NIMBYism to space and ban SpaceX from everywhere.)
I don't think there are diversion points, you either keep going to destination or turn around. The A380 is rated for ETOPS-330, that's 5hr30min from a diversion airport.
Incase anyone is wondering about ETOPS-N
For example, if an aircraft is rated for ETOPS-180, it means that it is able to fly with full load and just one engine for three hours. [1]
Obviously in this case it 5hours 30 minutes on one engine at full load.
-- Slight edit: Unclear if with a 4 engine its rated with 2 functional or still 1 functional engine.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS#Usage
I believe it's not just that it is able to fly with 1 engine. It's that the probability of a secondary engine failure in that time is below a certain threshold. Most twin engine planes can fly perfectly fine for basically any distance with an engine out, ETOPs provides confidence that the other one won't fail too.
Yes, for example the FAA requires a failure rate of better than 1 per 100,000 hours for ETOPS over 180 minutes.
ETOPS per se makes no sense for a 4 engine aircraft (the T in the acronym is "twin-engine".) Three- or four-engine aircraft have equivalent engine-out long-range operations ratings, though.
Apparently the acronym can now be read as the blander "ExTended OPerationS", or according to the ICAO all such flights can be referred to as EDTO (Extended Diversion Time Operations", which is less fun to say out loud and loses the joke definition "Engines Turn Or People Swim")
It is my understanding from a (no-longer-available) MIT OCW aircraft systems design video that these requirements are based on one engine failure on the aircraft, regardless of the number of engines on the aircraft.
A380 has 4 engines, so maybe it doees this with more than one ?
I think it means it can do it with 1, but the fact it has 4 gives it great redundancy.
I'm not sure. In the case of 4 engines, it may be 2 is how they certify it. Specifically I think the case where both engines on the same wing fail (as the worst case other that losing 3)
The rating is taking into consideration that it has 4 engines. The term is just confusing because it used to only apply to twin engine aircraft.
does aircraft only operate engine as minimal as possible to save fuel or they burn more if they use fewer engine to having engine work extra because of its weight ?
Yes they’ll use more fuel than running on all engines. They always load the extra fuel that would be required for the maximum flight time with an engine out.
The extra fuel burn is due to the drag from pushing a non-working engine through the air, and from the rudder deflection to counteract the unequal thrust. It’s less of an issue on a four engine aircraft with a single engine out as they can increase thrust on the remaining engine on the side with the engine out.
Extra fuel burn is also required because a twin engine aircraft with an engine out can’t maintain the normal cruising altitude, and the higher you are the more efficient the engines are.
Thrust can’t be reduced much to save fuel because the speed margins at altitude are quite narrow - if they reduce thrust and therefore airspeed they’ll descend.
You are correct. Diversion points are Perth or Durban. Nowhere else.
It's incredible a 14 hour flight can run with that level of certainty!
> shrill
I suspect you may have meant to say shill instead.
I can't imagine that much ... nothing out there.
I used to geek out on this, another one from pre-covid was Santiago Chile to Sydney AUS, 2-3x a week. That looked like one _lonely_ flight.
Why is that anyone else's problem besides SpaceX's? Are they going to pay for it?
Why would Qantas have the implicit right to the airspace first? Space travel and air travel are both value-added human activities. I can't see why we would always prioritize air travel (particularly in very remote locations like this) over space travel.
Most flights will never be impacted this way.
A flight is using a very narrow path, the rocket debris is "claiming" a huge unavoidable areas over probably a relatively long period of time.
I wonder what the math is on the plane actually getting hit if it took it's normal route.
Something with a lot of significant decimal places that are mostly zeroes.
Unfortunately "got hit by space debris in designated NOTAM area" looks bad in headlines.
Do you consider launching spy satellites "value added human activities"?
You're kidding right? This is space debris. If a Qantas flight crashed into your neighborhood, you know who's responsible right?
It's not space debris, it's the deliberate disposal of the upper stage of the rocket precisely to prevent it from becoming space debris. The time and location of re-entry are planned and controlled. This is not going to crash into your neighborhood (except if you're neighborhood is in certain areas of China, where they they happily dump spent rocket stages on populated areas).
Are international waters in the southern Indian ocean Qantas' neighborhood?
It's not the waters that's important here. It's the debris passing through the flight path.
> Space travel ... value-added human activities
Heavily debatable.
And you're equating to SpaceX dumping debris and trash in addition to their original flight path to a plane's flight path. Those are not equal things.
Why not? Both are an essential part of the operation.