The recent crash of a SpaceX test flight was a dramatic one, with broken rocket parts seen as jellyfish waves across the Caribbean sky on Thursday evening.

But some experts say that the focus on the flashy show, as the public and the media do, reflects a lack of understanding of the nature of the plane’s failure.

Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas Austin, compares and admires the beauty of the mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb.

“Being surprised by the magic of garbage (means) not understanding its meaning,” said Jah. “These things can harm the environment, they can affect people.”

There is also an immediate danger, shown by this event, brought by several tons of fire that falls on the water and, although the chances are low, maybe even on a less fortunate place.

Space hazards

Thursday’s Starship test – which was made up of two parts, the upper stage Starship (in this case, Train 33) and the lower stage Super Heavy Booster – took about eight and a half minutes. At that moment, the audience saw the most powerful rocket ever created to separate both sectors, and the impressive Holding the “chopstick” of the Super Heavy booster.

But soon after, SpaceX says it lost contact with the surface. Later, confused and panicked residents of Turks and Caicos watched their evening sky ablaze with the wreckage of Ship 33.

Elon Musk, billionaire CEO of SpaceX, he encouraged the cause was an “oxygen/fuel leak from the hole above the ship’s burner.” SpaceX said it is investigating the incident in cooperation with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is required “wrong search,” as was the case when the 2023 Starship test flight exploded again.

The voyage began in Boca Chica, Texas, and headed east across the Caribbean Sea. Satellite radios like this one produce air warnings in advance, but the loss of communication triggered another, more important one.

The FAA said in a statement that “the aircraft slowed down and diverted slightly” when the debris fell. The consequences were to slow down the aircraft, go around or turn back.

Some pilots could even see fireworks during their flights.

And for Jah, risks, even small ones, are not adequately communicated to air travelers.

“If you and I were to get on a plane and somebody said, ‘Hey, there’s a one in 10,000 chance you can’t,’ I’m not going to get on the plane,” Jah told CBC News from Austin. providing some speculation.

Boley agrees, saying that the risks and costs of the airline industry are being transferred to the airline industry.

Solving is difficult to model

The plane is believed to have crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, and there have been no reports of injuries or sightings of debris.

Aaron Boley, the director of the Outer Space Institute and an expert in space management, says there is not even a clue as to how the ships break up.

“The size of the debris field, the amount of debris, the lethal debris — meaning the amount of debris that falls and the velocity that can cause significant damage — are things that are not well understood at the moment,” said Boley, who is also an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia.

Jah agrees, calling projections “sadly sick of being able to predict anything with any kind of accuracy” and adopting an “hopeful approach” that ends up not causing problems.

‘Designated Hazard Area’

Even the most successful launch of this Starship was to hit the water anyway – but far away, and explode in the southern Indian Ocean.

A splashdown zone is a ‘danger zone,’ where it is considered to be in remote areas where there is little risk to human life. However, even a planned descent causes disruption of the flight. Australian airline Qantas says so SpaceX’s reentry has forced delays in recent weeks by flying over the Indian Ocean.

Falling down there “is a very slow process,” Boley said, giving people a better idea of ​​where things might fall and when.

But the worst way for debris to go down is an uncontrolled explosion like Thursday’s, which is a roll of the dice.

“You’re just assuming that these fragments are spread over a wide enough area that it’s unlikely to hit someone and cause damage,” Boley said.

A dangerous future

Because of all this uncertainty, experts say there is no general idea of ​​how rocket debris affects the marine environment.

Research in 2016 from a study by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric in New Zealand they reviewed the short-term and long-term risks rocket debris poses to nearby marine life.

His team of experts found 10 implementations, whether successful or not, and each of which makes 40 tons of waste “remain low risk.”

But more startups mean more risks.

“If it starts 100 the risks will be small, and 1,000 will be big,” he warned.

Experts say stopping space exploration is not the answer – but at the rate the industry is growing, more emphasis should be placed on calculating the environmental risks.

“What numbers are we going to follow?” Jah asks. “What kind of tests are we going to need so that people can explore space effectively, but not destroy the environment?”