This is about an hour away from my farm, so this'll be a fun conversation, and yet another great opportunity to tell a lot of people about what a huge problem we have with unregulated commercialization of orbit. (Also I just redid my slides for my public talk next week, this is going in!)
One aspect of this story I haven't really let myself get angry about until just now: this particular SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk that dropped garbage on Sask. was from the Axiom 3 "private astronaut mission."
"Private astronaut" = billionaire space tourist.
Billionaires own companies that other billionaires pay for joy rides that drop potentially lethal garbage on us from orbit. This is fine.
I already knew billionaires are horrible, but this particular situation really lays it out starkly.
@markmccaughrean Thanks for clarifying - I spent a little time wading through Axiom propoganda and it's really hard to figure out what's real. But...they did still pay their own way, correct? They're just very qualified billionaires? Or something? This just keeps getting weirder...
@markmccaughrean Wow, thank you for spelling that all out! I wish they'd made that more clear on their website...
This is all just bizarre.... and I wish Axiom and SpaceX would BOTH take responsibility for dumping garbage on Canada! SpaceX has still not publicly admitted anything, which is just totally obnoxious.
Thanks to @markmccaughrean for correcting my assumptions! I guess "private astronaut" really is the correct terminology here - they were all trained astronauts with their tickets paid by their government or employers (I guess other Axiom missions were more for space tourists?) Still kind of weird.
And it would still be great if SpaceX and Axiom would publicly admit they made a big engineering mistake and state they will fix it, rather than just giving farmers piddly little private payments.
Anybody remember that documentary filmmaker who brought a crew out here back in Feb? His whole film "Shifting Baselines" is effectively about how recklessly dangerous SpaceX is.
The Sask space junk fell about 30 km away from where the film crew and I went to access Bortle 2 dark skies, only a couple weeks later.
So, I just chatted with him again! Editing is almost done on his documentary, but he thought he could squeeze in a bit of a recording of me talking about space junk for an epilogue.
I talked to the farmer again and apparently SpaceX is coming on Thursday to pick up the space junk. He said he'd be happy to host some journalists at his farm to record the hand-off and keep SpaceX honest.
So, I just emailed a large fraction of the local journalists who have interviewed me about this to give them a heads-up 😈
It's perhaps the ugliest haircut ever, but I managed to shear my llama over the weekend!
At first I tried to get him into a small pen, but he knew it was a trap. So I just started cutting (with hand shears). He tolerated it for about a minute at a time, then he'd walk away, and I'd give him a little break, then start cutting again.
I got close to 10 pounds of (really dirty) wool, and now he looks like he's carved out of mattress foam. So weird. Hopefully he'll be cooler for the summer now!
@msquebanh This llama is SO good! Didn't try to spit even once. I've only had him a few months so I'm still learning llama body language, but I think this is maybe the most magically chill llama on the planet
(Side note: you are SO amazing! You do so many incredibly good things for the world! Thank you)