Boeing-made satellite explodes in space

[Sirius]

Tit-for-tat for what? The service module burned up in the atmosphere. There was no evidence that it hit anything, or did anything to any Chinese satellite. And hitting a geosynchronous communications satellite instead of a military satellite wouldn't send much of a message.

Death by a 1000 cuts.  Randomly messing with technology is something I would 100% do as an adversary.  I'm sure this is being taken seriously and investigated and filed away as another annoyance.

Tit-for-tat for what?  It's doesn't take a phd to understand that starlink is a massive problem.

[UltraBudgie]

China recently tested an electromagnet with a magnetic field strength of 42 Teslas. Upon hearing this, Elon's eyebrows went into orbit.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHv6yPfIcZ8

[Zaphod58]

Death by a 1000 cuts.  Randomly messing with technology is something I would 100% do as an adversary.  I'm sure this is being taken seriously and investigated and filed away as another annoyance.

Tit-for-tat for what?  It's doesn't take a phd to understand that starlink is a massive problem.

So they blow up a high throughput communications satellite that doesn't affect anything the US does, but hurts Africa, the Middle East, Asia and other areas? It would make far more sense, if this was tit-for-tat to take out an old US satellite to show that they could any time. There are plenty of non-functional US satellites that could be taken out with little ramification. It also doesn't make sense to do it when there's a magnetic field anomaly going on exactly when it blows up. That doesn't send a message and can and will be ignored and passed off as being a natural event.

[Zaphod58]

Here is a video of the fragment tracking:
https://x.com/shell_jim/status/1849184334844133453

Boeing didn't have insurance on the satellite.

Because it's not a Boeing owned satellite. It was built by them but it was owned by Intelsat as part of their Epic network. Boeing built it, but that's all.

[85303]

Didn't we hear all about this in school, just takes one wrong object to cause a domino of cascading debris falling around the world ushering hellfires and mass extinctions from our mistake of building an unstable debris field?

I guess that was fear mongering.

On a serious note, if humans are capable of sending satellites across the universe with seemingly perfect precision, is there not someone who could predict where the pieces of satellite would end up after long periods of time?  What's the likelihood it was intentionally sabatoged to safely destruct others under the guise of a mistake?

Just a theory.  About a possible conspiracy

[Zaphod58]

On a serious note, if humans are capable of sending satellites across the universe with seemingly perfect precision, is there not someone who could predict where the pieces of satellite would end up after long periods of time?  What's the likelihood it was intentionally sabatoged to safely destruct others under the guise of a mistake?

It's entirely possible to predict in the short term where pieces of satellite will end up, but the calculations are insane to figure out what small pieces are going to do long term after a satellite breaks up. They don't stay in orbit long, if they're in LEO. They'll stay longer in geosynchronous orbit, but eventually they'll decay there as well.

[Maxmars]

Boeing didn't have insurance on the satellite.

Why does that make sense?

[Zaphod58]

Why does that make sense?

They didn't have insurance on it, because they didn't own it. They built it for Intelsat.

[Blaine91555]

They didn't have insurance on it, because they didn't own it. They built it for Intelsat.

Thanks for all the info Zaph. I ran into this this morning and you answered any questions I had. My first kneejerk was like others here, so I appreciate getting facts from someone who knows what they are talking about.

[Maxmars]

They didn't have insurance on it, because they didn't own it. They built it for Intelsat.

Damn!  And here I was working up an "uninsured motorist" joke!