Shout out to the lovely snuggly farm cat who rubbed on everyone's legs, graciously accepted pats, and then curled up for a nap on very expensive recording equipment.

Well...they played Duel of the Fates just before they quoted me about SpaceX being awful on my local CBC radio station! Wowee, that was awesome. I think it's time for me to get off the computer and snuggle goats for a while.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/spacex-cbc-debris-space-junk-sask-1.7231571

But I'm SO HAPPY about how everything went today!

Journalists chasing down SpaceX employees on a grain farm in the middle of nowhere!

SpaceX maybe getting held accountable! (Well, big maybe, but I did my best here, and I'll keep fighting!)

Donuts, Uhauls, snuggly farm cats, and international law. Wow.

So...now what?

After all that, I am really not sure if what just happened was 100% legal.

I'm not sure what Canadians are supposed to do if they find space junk.

I have a nice map of where several pieces were found (along about 50km of the projected ground track), and I'm sure more pieces will be found in the coming months/years. What are people supposed to do with them? (The SpaceX dudes did not answer that question.)

So, I'm sure this story's far from over.

Ooo this one's pretty good too, includes the cat rubbing her face on the space junk, but no mention of the donuts! https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6420052

Ooo nice I got angry, insulting emails from an Elon-bro (yes, multiple emails from one Elon-bro). Guess maybe these articles are reaching people?

THIS IS IT!! THIS IS THE BEST ONE! WATCH THIS ONE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p48yz7VXMqg

They even included me trying to give them donuts and smiling evilly after saying "I'm an astronomer"

I need to give some more donuts to the Global News team. SO GOOD.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/c2938548-ctv-national-news--spacex-keen-on-sask--space-junk?playlistId=1.6922596

I finally just went ahead and emailed the reporter who posted the screenshotted text on twitter to see if he can point me to where the original official statement is posted. I am so curious to know if it's real or not... that is the ONLY public acknowledgement I've seen that the Saskatchewan space junk belongs to SpaceX.

Just put on my Professor Sweater (TM) to do a quick CBC interview about Starlink reentries destroying the ozone layer. I made sure to heavily reference the giant pieces of SpaceX debris that landed near me as evidence that they need better oversight and regulation.

I still don't know if this "offiical NASA statement" twitter screenshot thing is real or not, and none of my space policy friends know either! This is... so weird.

It looks like maybe SpaceX has just publicly admitted (via NASA) that they have a debris problem. So much of a problem that they have set up a debris reporting hotline!! (I am sooo tempted to call it - but I'm sure they wouldn't answer any of my questions either)

I tried searching for this statement from NASA but the only source seems to be a screenshot of text on twitter (that a journalist sent me)

(...could it be a prank? That would be a *hilarious* prank)

Hey, finally made it into an American news story! So far, SpaceX has not contacted the people in North Carolina who found SpaceX debris. Interesting. I hope that news stories like this will push them to take some responsibility here!

https://wlos.com/news/local/professor-spacexs-lack-of-accountability-for-space-debris-frustrating-nasa-samantha-lawlwer-university-of-regina-saskatchewan-canada

The reporter emailed me back! It's a screenshot of an email that NASA public affairs sent to him.

So, except for the Australia junk in 2022, SpaceX has still not publicly admitted to any of the Crew Dragon trunk debris falls. But apparently NASA thinks they have admitted to all of it. INTERESTING.

@skrishna Thank you! You do a really excellent job covering everything that's happening in space, so I'm really looking forward to seeing your take on the whole space junk situation

My friend texted me about this podcast: "It's right up your alley!" and then about 30 seconds later "Oh, it IS your alley. It's you!"

I did the interview for this months ago, and it's finally up and it's quite good! http://outsideinradio.org/shows/the-new-space-race

I finally skimmed through the newish Planet 9 paper that I'm supposed to talk about with 2 journalists today. The authors (all dudes, by the way) basically say that my team's work (and the work of another independent team) that meticulously tracks and accounts for observation biases is wrong and not worth their consideration, because it doesn't agree with their conclusions.

So now I'm mad. These will be fun interviews, I guess? Changing it up from complaining about SpaceX at least...

Worst part of updating my talk: looking up how fucking many more Starlink satellites there were than last time I gave a version of this talk. 200 more than a month ago. Fuck.

There are now 6,209 Starlinks in orbit, fully 62% of the 10,009 active satellites in orbit.

All of these "fully demisable" Starlinks are planned to burn up and deposit their metal in Earth's atmosphere. I just saw multiple 100-pound pieces of another SpaceX "fully demisable" rocket, so I'm sure it'll be just fine.

I know I'm super lucky to have a dishwasher. I use it at least once a day for all the cooking we do. Washing dishes is my LEAST favourite chore, and I'm happy to delegate it to a machine.

But my 3 yr old dishwasher is dead. We have incredibly hard water here (and don't have a water softener because the plumbing is ancient and terrifying). I'm guessing that the hard water killed the circulation pump.

Worth fixing? Buy a new one? Getting parts out here is hard.

...IF wherever I can order from actually ships to rural PO boxes, that is... (I've had that complaint on here before too - I don't have an address! I only have a PO box. That's how most of rural Canada works, and yet, a large fraction of companies won't ship to PO boxes. So dumb...)

Ooof so much mundane complaining this morning. I promise I'll get back to goats, cheese, and SpaceX shitposting soon.

Once I'm done with this batch of cheese (and washing dishes, dammit) I'll get back to this. From a bunch of reading and youtube videos, I think the circulation pump died. Going to try taking that out once I find hose clamps to replace the ones I'm going to have to destroy to get it out, try cleaning it and putting it back together. If it still doesn't run, I can order a new circulation pump for $90ish and try that in a few days when it arrives.