jccc 4 hours ago

From the first paragraph:

Earlier reports suggested it could have been something from space but that seems unlikely since the velocity of anything that survived reentry would likely have caused substantial damage beyond a cracked windshield. The theory was likely amplified by the captain of the flight who reportedly described the object that hit the plane as “space debris.”

Maybe the submitted headline isn’t justified?

  • dghf 4 hours ago

    The article says it's been updated. Possibly the submitted headline reflects the original version?

    • jccc 3 hours ago

      Was wondering the same the moment I posted.

      Here’s what appears to be the prior version from archive.ph, which does align more with the submitted hed:

      Authorities are now considering whether a falling object, possibly from space, caused damage to the windshield and frame on a United 737 MAX over Colorado on Thursday. Various reports that include watermarked photos of the damage suggest the plane was struck by a falling object not long after taking off from Denver for Los Angeles. One of the photos shows a pilot’s arm peppered with small cuts and scratches. In his remarks after the incident, the captain reportedly described the object that hit the plane as “space debris,” which would suggest it was from a rocket or satellite or some other human-made object. Some reports say it was possibly a meteorite.

      Whatever hit the plane, it was an enormously rare event and likely the first time it’s ever happened. The plane diverted without incident to Salt Lake City where the approximately 130 passengers were put on another plane to finish the last half of the 90-minute flight. Apparently only one layer of the windshield was damaged, and there was no depressurization. The crew descended from 36,000 feet to 26,000 feet for the diversion, likely to ease the pressure differential on the remaining layers of windshield. Neither the airline nor FAA have commented.

      Would be nice to update the HN hed though.

bronco21016 20 hours ago

There are some other pictures circulating showing the exterior of the aircraft. It definitely appears something hit the aircraft. There is a skid mark on the frame around the window.[1]

Will be interesting to read if an investigative report is made public.

[1]https://viewfromthewing.com/new-cockpit-photos-may-show-what...

  • stevehawk 16 hours ago

    anyone know why these photos have random paperclip/clippy icons?

    • dmbche 13 hours ago

      Not sure but first thought was part of the right to repair movement having adopted clippy as a mascot/logo (louis rossman)

      • echelon 13 hours ago

        They use clippy, not paperclips.

        Specifically the cartoon stock art clippy from the original video essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_Dtmpe9qaQ

        Notice how almost all the comments on that video bear the clippy icon. It's spreading everywhere. Twitter, Reddit, Instagram ...

        • numpad0 13 hours ago

          tldw?

          • program_whiz 4 hours ago

            The TLDW : In the 90s clippy was a symbol of a friendly product feature that wanted to help you do one thing (but you could opt out). Clippy wasn't stealing your data, serving you ads, or anything malicious, it just wanted to help you do one specific thing (e.g. write a letter). The clippy movement is about sending a message to big tech that we don't appreciate ads in our start menu, having our data scraped and sold, being forced into dark patterns, having AI try to take jobs and/or destroy industry, blatant theft of work, etc. Basically, "make computers friendly again".

          • echelon 12 hours ago

            The most "2020s internet" tldw ever:

            https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R-qrjJr5Ets

            Despite the "internetedness" of this, it's a pretty concise summary.

            I'm actually really proud of these kids for doing this. It probably won't amount to much, but they're increasingly conscious of and vocal about the problems caused by Big Tech.

            • numpad0 11 hours ago

              ...tldw? Seriously. Or could you timestamp it? I can't find attentionmaxxed flicks as attention grabbing. It fills up my attention receptors and my brain marks them as done literally 1-2 seconds in with generated mental summaries.

              • harshreality 10 hours ago

                Seriously, watch at least half of Louis Rossman's video in the GGGP post. It's worth the 2 minutes at 2x speed it'll take (4mins at 1x speed). You won't get the spirit of the thing quite the same if you don't hear him explain it.

                It's a signal of disgust and rebellion against modern evil that companies do — they abuse attention, data-mine, etc. The clippy mascot represents something that, in contrast, may have been dumb and annoying, but was not actively evil. "Clippy just wanted to help."

                • serf 6 hours ago

                  I can't think of a lower-effort or less beneficial social rebellion, and on top of that the messaging is totally confused and half of the people that encounter it will need it explained to them.

                  it'll just be purposefully misinterpreted on the corporate level and Microsoft will roll out a clippy that does abuse the user to ride the momentum.

                  • jwald33 2 hours ago

                    Rossmann is the first to admit that Clippy pfps do nothing if the person stops their activism after that one gesture. A 5 second pfp change to spark a conversation (the one we're having, for example) is pretty decent ROI.

                • j4coh 7 hours ago

                  I tried watching, it’s something to do with brainrot content? I’m not really sure I get it. I’m not entirely sure I watched the intended video.

                  • echelon 8 minutes ago

                    This is how the upcoming generation consumes content. Better get somewhat used to it.

                • numpad0 9 hours ago

                  so it's a dog whistle and a cult symbol, got it...

                  • Gigablah 6 hours ago

                    Just say “virtue signaling”, it’s not that deep

                  • hnbad 3 hours ago

                    I don't think you know what those words mean.

                    A dog whistle is intended to be only recognized by those who are intended to "hear" it - like how an actual dog whistle appears almost entirely silent to humans but can be heard by dogs. It exists to signal alignment to those "in the know" while providing plausible deniability that can be used to paint anyone pointing it out as a conspiracy theorist. A lot of far-right/neo-nazi 4chan/8kun memes fall into this category: the "OK" hand sign, the use of Pepe the frog (although that one quickly saw wider adoption making it too ambiguous for signalling purposes), even simply the concept of drinking milk, but also of course "number codes" like 14, 88 or 13/50. These don't have to have an inherent/original meaning as they're often more effective if they're sufficiently obscure/rare but have pre-existing unrelated meaning. Clearly Clippy is not a dog whistle then: although it references a pre-existing thing, there's no semantic ambiguity nor any attempt to hide or deny its meaning. The intent is to get people curious, find out its meaning and adopt it if they agree with it.

                    Cult symbols are also usually meant to be easily obscured and meaningless to the uninitiated. They're also often used as a form of communication but otherwise usually behave similarly to dog whistles. Unlike the dog whistles I mentioned they usually have no prior meaning (unless they're adopted from pre-existing occult/religious symbolism) and primarily profess shared mantras/beliefs. Some more widely known examples can als be found in Christianity: the crucifix symbolizes the professed belief that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross as a human and rose from the dead as the Son of God, the "Jesus fish" (ICHTHYS) symbol represents a bunch of ideas in addition to being derived from an abbreviation of the professed belief in Jesus as the Son of God and Savior - the latter is widely claimed to originate very much in a "cult symbol" by allowing Christians to identify each other in a way not obvious to outsiders during times in which they were facing religious suppression. If there is a mantra in Clippy, it's "Clippy never hurt anyone" and that seems a bit too self-referential - plus as I said "followers" will happily explain this meaning to you.

                    A sibling suggest "virtue signal" and I guess that's a better fit but only through the semantic erosion the term has experienced as part of the US conservative culture war on "wokeness" (a term that suffers from the same problem).

                    I'd say the French flag profile pictures following the ISIS attacks in France or the rainbow colors adopted by various corporations on social media for Pride Month pre-Trump were a better example for virtue signals. Clippy seems a lot more confined and specific to really fit in the same bucket. The French flag really just expressed some vague notion of "solidarity", the rainbow colors in corporate imagery just vaguely expressed support for "diversity". So they literally exist to signal virtues - vague "support" for a concept generally understood to be positive - nothing concrete. Clippy on the other hand seems to specifically represent opposition to specific common business practices in the (US especially and AI in particular) tech industry.

              • hnbad 4 hours ago

                TLDW?

                We used to hate Clippy because he felt intrusive. Now AI is much more deliberately intrusive and every service mines your data. Clippy doesn't seem so bad in comparison. Hence, nostalgia mixed with a form of protest against the AI tech space.

                • numpad0 an hour ago

                  THANK YOU. Yours is by far the best TL;DW so far instead of being "come to our gathering and your life will change forever" nonsense.

                  • echelon 12 minutes ago

                    Except the protest isn't against AI. It has more to do with right to repair and antipatterns and general big tech bad behavior.

    • stephen_g 11 hours ago

      If it's not an unusual watermark, perhaps it's to confuse AI classifiers?

    • slicktux 16 hours ago

      Probably OPs’ version of watermark..?

      • Archonical 14 hours ago

        Watermarks usually have branding to indicate ownership. Two distinct 3D paperclip overlays don't seem like watermarks and JonNYC doesn't use them in all photos he's posted on his thread on Bluesky.

        They don't even seem to serve as visual cues.

    • randomtoast 10 hours ago

      It could be a size reference.

  • fragmede 19 hours ago

    Interesting, that link says it might just be hail.

    • bronco21016 19 hours ago

      A lot doesn't add up from that article though. The writer mentions the window in question is the Captain's window. From the pictures, it appears to be the First Officer's window. Also, the writer mentions pock marks consistent with hail damage in other areas of the aircraft but I haven't found any images substantiating that.

      Hail is absolutely the most probably explanation, the article points to two other instances with similar outcomes. I think the doubt comes from the lack of evidence of hail or convective activity or other hail damage on the aircraft. Also, the pilot reportedly said he saw something coming at the aircraft.

      • JCM9 18 hours ago

        Most journalists are pretty bad when it comes to covering aviation so I wouldn’t put much weight on the discrepancies. Half the time they can’t tell the difference between a jet and a Cessna 172. Seriously.

        • thayne 14 hours ago

          Journalists are generally pretty bad at covering any technical topic, unless the journalist has some specific training in that topic, which is rare.

          • herewulf 13 hours ago

            Indeed. As an engineer I ask an expert to review anything technical that I write (or program) for accuracy where I'm not an expert, but for some reason journalists don't do this. And so here we are.

            • maxbond 13 hours ago

              > ...but for some reason journalists don't do this.

              I imagine most journalists would love to have technical reviewers on their work, but there's no funding for it and there's pressure to churn content as quickly as possible. The specialized editors and fact checkers have been stripped away in the last few decades to create lean content mills.

              • serf 6 hours ago

                >I imagine most journalists would love to have technical reviewers on their work, but there's no funding for it and there's pressure to churn content as quickly as possible.

                well, so, we call these people what they are : tabloid writers.

                journalists are the ones that take the time, effort, and cost to verify claims and rebroadcast perceived truths.

              • hsbauauvhabzb 8 hours ago

                My local papers can’t even publish without glaring spelling errors that would be highlighted in every editor that supports spell checking

          • Quekid5 9 hours ago

            The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is always important to keep in mind.

      • grapesodaaaaa 13 hours ago

        I feel like a hail would cause a strong radar return that would have been noticed or at least documented by NEXRAD or onboard systems.

        I’m sure the NTSB investigation will consider this angle, and we will find out eventually.

    • Cthulhu_ 7 hours ago

      Would hail form that high up? I thought any water would have frozen / solidified well below that height, it's -55 celsius up there.

      • zamadatix 2 hours ago

        Hail can be found higher than cruising altitude. Remember, it forms by riding updrafts in large storm clouds. Those updrafts don't stop blowing based on what's going on with the hail.

        That said, I really doubt this was hail. The pilot is said to have seen something coming, which is probably why they are focused on a weather balloon payload now.

JBiserkov 20 hours ago
  • gpm 20 hours ago

    Interesting that there's been a bird strike at that altitude before (per the comments in avherald). I didn't know birds flew that high.

    • jddj 19 hours ago
      • ghxst 15 hours ago

        This is awesome

      • Razengan 11 hours ago

        Love websites like this, reminding you why the internet exists :)

        Wish it used a larger more readable font or at least had an option for one though.

        • db48x 9 hours ago

          Instead of complaining about individual sites, learn to use your browser more effectively. They can all zoom in on things, and any good one will let you set a minimum font size. Set that to the smallest size that you can easily read and instantly no website anywhere will ever have text that is too small to read.

          • rglynn 9 hours ago

            laughs in Asian webpage using images with text instead of text

            Jokes aside, this is good advice.

          • Arch-TK 9 hours ago

            And a bunch of poorly written websites will break :P

            • db48x 7 hours ago

              No, not generally. 99% of all webpages you visit will be perfectly fine. At most you might notice some misalignment between graphical and text elements on the page, but most pages don’t rely on that for anything important.

    • ardel95 17 hours ago

      Demoiselle crane flies over Himalayas and over Everest during its yearly migration, so it'd be flying at least 30k feet high.

      I only know that from Planet Earth documentary, which was such a great show!

      • tetris11 2 hours ago

        Only 4k feet off the ground though, given the height of Everest

    • grapesodaaaaa 19 hours ago

      In this case, it should be easy to detect genetic or biological material if it was a meat sack strike & rule out space debris. They don’t tend to do well when hit at several hundred mph.

      The only other thing really up that high would be space debris, weather balloon payload (the balloon itself is very thin and soft), or maybe a sounding rocket (but don’t these come with NOTAMs?).

      • potato3732842 16 hours ago

        Or just look for the blood splat.

        A bird at hundreds of miles an hour leaves a heck of a blood trail.

        • fyver 14 hours ago

          He took a duck in the face at 250 knots.

    • gus_massa 15 hours ago

      It hit the plane on the front. Doesn't something like a bird that flies at a stable altitude increase the chance of a collision on the front?

      • kijin 12 hours ago

        If you're traveling at 500mph, any relatively stationary object is likely to hit you on the front.

        • gus_massa 6 hours ago

          I agree, but meteorites or satellite debris have a big vertical velocity and are more likely to hit on the top.

    • ChrisMarshallNY 20 hours ago

      I can't remember the species, but there's a bird that files crazy high. I think it's a vulture.

      • marcosdumay 20 hours ago

        Yes, vultures can fly crazy high, and do a lot of damage to aircraft.

        They are a well-known nemesis of military planes, that fly faster and don't have redundancy to survive a hit.

        • dotancohen 20 hours ago

          It should be noted that many species are occasionally hit at altitudes thought to be impossible for them to fly at.

          One notable example: https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/flying-fish/

          • marcosdumay 19 hours ago

            Yeah, if I had to predict that kind of collision with fauna, I would fail.

          • JoelMcCracken 18 hours ago

            Given this happened 400 ft past the end of the runway, I really don’t think the altitude involved would be very surprising

            • marcosdumay 17 hours ago

              Well, the species in question tend to not veer much higher than the water level.

              • JoelMcCracken 2 hours ago

                https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/math/speed-distan...

                180 mph taken from a bit of googling, ballpark figure on upper end.

                So this was really immediately after takeoff. My understanding of commercial airliners is they usually fly fairly parallel with the ground just after takeoff to pick up speed before ascending, so I would guess they hadn’t much altitude at all.

                Anyway it’s a very interesting article, ty to poster! And it was an interesting question to think about.

        • ChrisMarshallNY 17 hours ago

          That probably depends on the plane.

          The A-10 Warthog is known for being quite tough. It operates relatively slowly, at small-arms altitudes, so it can take a licking.

        • michaelcampbell 18 hours ago

          > They are a well-known nemesis of military planes, that fly faster and don't have redundancy to survive a hit.

          Wait, military aircraft have LESS redundancy to survive "hits" than civil?

          • marcosdumay 17 hours ago

            AFAIK (what is not much on the military side), fighters are all optimized for performance, and not resilience. And fighters that work on improving the crew options focus on survivability instead of resilience because it tends to weight less.

            As a result, resilience isn't great.

            Bombers and logistic planes have redundancy.

            • thayne 14 hours ago

              I guess they just have a big enough budget that losing millions of dollars of plane to a bird isn't a big deal?

              • dmoy 11 hours ago

                It's more like if you make a plane resilient to bird strikes, you sacrifice a good chunk of performance - envelope, maneuverability, something.

                Depending on how fast the plane is going, "good chunk" might be a hilarious understatement too. Hitting an object at 1000mph imparts 4x the damage compared to hitting an object at 500mph.

                If you want to see an example of a durable military aircraft, look at the A-10:

                (Hit by a literal bird, still flying: https://www.nbcrightnow.com/news/a-10-warthog-hits-bird-at-r...)

                (Hit by idk what, giant hole in engine, engine on fire, still flying for an hour back to base: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-another-story-10-warth...)

                Anyways, that's a military plane designed to get hit by... stuff... and as a result can take bird strikes. But its max speed is like 400mph and it would get absolutely wrecked by any serious opposition from fighters. The more resilient you make a plane to birds, the more vulnerable it is to missiles, per unit price. And missiles is kinda the point of the whole endeavor.

            • lazide 16 hours ago

              F22. F14. F18.

              • usefulcat 12 hours ago

                I heard that the Navy (historically, at least--don't know about today) placed a greater value than the Air Force on engine redundancy. Hence why we have both the twin engine F-18 (Navy) and the single engine F-16 (Air Force), even though functionally there's a lot of overlap between the two.

                • hollerith 3 hours ago

                  They were, but soon the only fighter or attack aircraft operating from the US's carriers will be single-engine (namely, the F35).

                • lazide 6 hours ago

                  Sure, but then you also have the F22, F117, B2, A10, SR71, U2, and a bunch more I can’t think of right now.

                  Some helicopters have a single engine. Most have 2. They are still unreliable death machines, and arguably 2 engines makes the problem a bit worse (more moving parts). They are (sometimes) more tolerant of a single engine out, of course. But transmissions are often the weak spot with helicopters.

                  Single vs Dual has many factors, not just reliability.

                  A single engine failure on a SR71 (if I remember correctly) resulted in a airframe loss and ejection at relatively low speeds, and one at full speed would likely result in a complete crew loss on top of it - and it has dual engines. Think catastrophic near instant destruction.

                  Sometimes you just need more power than a single engine (with current tech) can provide in the space you have available, for instance.

                  Sometimes, like an A10, you really do want something that can take a massive beating and keep going.

                  A B52 can lose 2 engines with no issues, and theoretically up to 4 and still be controllable (depending on the distribution of the lost engines). But that isn’t because it needs reliability, but because it’s got 8 engines because it was designed to carry a metric shit ton of explosives, and it only had 60’s era tech jet engines.

                  Modern jets usually use 2 (much more powerful) engines for similar or even larger payloads.

          • potato3732842 16 hours ago

            >Wait, military aircraft have LESS redundancy to survive "hits" than civil?

            How many single engine civilian jets are there?

          • hollerith 16 hours ago

            The small ones have less, yes. In compensation, they have ejection seats.

          • wkat4242 18 hours ago

            Um yeah that's really surprising considering military planes are designed for situations where there are being shot at.

            • MindSpunk 12 hours ago

              They're designed around not getting hit at all, rather than being able to take hits. Stealth, stand-off weapons, sensor fusion and information displays all so the plane never gets put in a position to be hit.

              That's not to say they don't defend in depth, one reason twin engine fighters are desired is because of engine redundancy after all, but a more "armored" plain is a slower, bulkier, easier to detect and easier to hit target. And you'll still likely get taken down in one hit.

              And there's still not a lot you can do if your engine swallows a bird or two, especially if you only have one.

              The military also has the expectation that not everyone is going to come home, unlike a civilian airliner where the safety margins are much wider.

            • B1FF_PSUVM 17 hours ago

              I'd guess they mostly try to "move fast and don't get broken" ...

          • mynegation 18 hours ago

            Civil aircraft usually have at least two engines and military - usually one.

            • lazide 18 hours ago

              Haha, no. Most military aircraft have multiple engines.

              • topkai22 17 hours ago

                That might be technically true, but the F35 and F16 are both single engine aircraft and IIRC constitute the bulk of at least the US air force’s combat aircraft.

                • lazide 17 hours ago

                  B2, F117, B52, P9, F22, F14, F18, C130, C17, C5, CH47, AH-64, SR71, U2, A10, and on and on just to give some recent examples.

                  There are a few single engine aircraft roles (including the F104), but they are not and have never been the bulk of active serving aircraft. It isn’t just ‘technically’ true.

                  • mango7283 8 hours ago

                    Be that as it may, the workhorse combat aircraft of most NATO air forces and the USAF itself is the F-16, a single-engine fighter, and its nominal replacement, the F-35 is also single engine. You can try to make your point by comparing those vs the numbers of F-15s, F/A-18s, F-Fs, Rafales, Eurofighters and so on in service vs the F-16 and F-35, but bringing C130s and C17s into it is irrelevant, those are not "combat aircraft".

                    edit: ah but they are "military aircraft", sure. fine.

                    • lazide 4 hours ago

                      I think you mean ‘fighter jet’ which is a small set of ‘combat aircraft’ which is further a small set of ‘military aircraft’.

                      And not all fighter jets are single engine. For example, the F22, F18, etc.

    • SideburnsOfDoom 8 hours ago

      Yes, however this incident appears to have been caused by an object smaller and denser than a bird.

      Likely candidates are 1) some metal payload dangling from a defunct high-altitude balloon and

      2) space rock.

jjwiseman 13 hours ago

It seems like the article has been updated: "Sources told AVweb Sunday that the focus of the investigation is on a weather balloon payload." This is far more likely than a meteor.

  • LeifCarrotson 3 hours ago

    More likely, but still spectacularly unlucky.

    Space is big, but the upper atmosphere is pretty big, too!

    I understand that there are a lot of planes and they cover a lot of miles, and there are a lot of weather balloons too... but each windshield is merely tracing a 40cm high by 150cm wide rectangle across an entire country, through an airspace 12km tall covering 10 million square kilometers.

    My son brings his glove when we go to a game for the local minor league baseball team in case of a foul ball or home run, we've spent a couple dozen hours in seats near enough to the action to give it a chance...but that glove has not yet intersected with the path of a baseball in an environment that's significantly more target-dense.

    What's the probability that the path of a plane windshield randomly intersects with a weather balloon payload? I would have said it's negligible, but apparently not!

krisoft 21 hours ago

> Apparently only one layer of the windshield was damaged

How does that square with the picture of the pilot’s arm with tiny cuts? Did the space debris only damage the internal layer? Something is not adding up to me here.

  • gnarlouse 21 hours ago

    Maybe the outermost layers just transferred the energy to the innermost, which exploded tiny shards of glass? In general though, I agree, weird.

    • Jalad 20 hours ago

      And in tank warfare this is called spalling

      A projectile hits the armor and doesn't penetrate it, but the armor inside still fragments and injured the operators

      • hinkley 18 hours ago

        > Spalling

        This was also adopted by The Expanse, where the interiors of ships (particularly war ships) are coated in antispalling coatings.

        • lotrjohn 17 hours ago

          Hey bossman thanks for pointing this out. Will have to look for it next time I watch. Yam seng.

          • hinkley 16 hours ago

            It’s mentioned in the books, kopeng. I think it comes up in some of the repair scenes, but there’s such a jargon dump in many of them that it might slip by. Naomi is caressing some of it at one point, like she’s petting a cat. Which is not far off from how she sees the Roci.

          • usefulcat 12 hours ago

            *bosmang. I'm not sure it's mentioned in the show, but it is in the books.

        • flashman 17 hours ago

          didn't help Shed Garvey lol

          • hinkley 16 hours ago

            My read is that it works mostly for battle shrapnel and space mining accidents and does nothing for kinetic weapons, hit or miss for micrometeoroids.

          • kataklasm 4 hours ago

            Shed was killed by a railgun round. These are kinetic projectiles, spall lining doesn't do anything against those.

    • hinkley 18 hours ago

      That would be two layers though.

      But the coloration in the window sure suggests spalling. I’m surprised the tempered glass did that much damage. That takes a lot of velocity. Which is probably why they aren’t thinking bird.

  • crazygringo 18 hours ago

    Came here to ask the same thing -- something is missing from the reporting because this makes absolutely no sense.

  • squirtle24 15 hours ago

    I suspect the cuts on the pilot's arm are from BEFORE the incident. The blood looks a pretty dried up and the yellowish streaks look like some kind of antiseptic ointment was applied. The oval shaped wound closest to the camera looks like it's been healing. Could be wrong though.

    • Nition 14 hours ago

      Now I'm just imagining the object hitting the window, the pilot looking down at his arm injury from the bowl of petunias that hit the plane yesterday, and thinking "not again."

      • robertlagrant 8 hours ago

        That pilot would not be having a whale of a time, that's for sure.

    • RealStickman_ 10 hours ago

      Making sure the plane continues to fly would be the top priority for a pilot. Second to that, formulating an emergency plan and communicating with air traffic control. Taking pictures of you wounds should be extremely far down the list

      • rkomorn 10 hours ago

        "Aviate. Communicate. Navigate." is so passé.

        Now it's "Digitize. Publicize. Monetize."

    • onionisafruit 14 hours ago

      Why would there be a picture of the arm circulating if the injuries are from another incident? I won’t dispute your analysis of the photo because I don’t know anything about the subject

      • squirtle24 14 hours ago

        Edit: I take that back. Another photo has emerged showing more blood.

        https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatLookedExpensive/comments/1oalnx...

        --

        None of the articles I have seen have said the lacerations are a result of the "space debris" incident. The linked article simply says "One of the photos shows a pilot’s arm peppered with small cuts and scratches", and which is not the same as "the pilot said the shattering glass caused the cuts you see on his arm."

        I am saying it is possible that the pilot had a previous, unrelated injury, and it just so happened to be captured in the picture of the windshield. That picture is going viral because it was likely one of the first pics from the incident, but it does not mean his injuries are necessarily from the incident. I was only pointing this out based on the way the blood looked more dried up and treated/healing.

        • kijin 12 hours ago

          The pilot probably took the photograph after landing. There's no time to take selfies during an emergency!

      • MindSpunk 12 hours ago

        Not saying it's what's happened here, but it's very easy for someone to post any image and claim it's from the same incident. Get the post enough attention and if it seems genuine enough other people will share and repost without fact checking, then people will share and reposts the reposts, and so on.

        Professional outlets do this all the time, and they're _paid_ not to mess this up. Copying other outlet's bad reporting without fact checking, then once a couple more "corroborating" articles come up (or one from a reputable outlet) and it'll just be repeated as fact, they can't all be wrong right?

thayne 14 hours ago

The article itself says the object was probably a weather balloon, not space debris, and the title of the article is now "United MAX Hit by Falling Object at 36,000 Feet".

Maybe the title here should be updated?

hughes 21 hours ago

There should be small pieces of whatever they hit embedded in the body & glass of the aircraft. As long as they are analyzed, the cause of this won't remain a mystery forever.

  • shrx 20 hours ago

    Unless it was hail.

  • Reason077 20 hours ago

    My first thought was that this is more likely to be a spontaneous failure of the windshield glass under pressure, due to manufacturing flaw or improper maintenance. Things like that have certainly happened before. But then again, it seems weird that glass fragments would be projected inward in that scenario.

    • rootusrootus 19 hours ago

      There are pictures of the outside where you can clearly see impact damage to the top of the window frame.

    • WalterBright 20 hours ago

      > it seems weird that glass fragments would be projected inward in that scenario

      At speed, I don't know what the outside pressure on the windshield would be, but I'd be surprised if it was lower than the cabin air pressure.

      After all, it is called a wind "shield".

      • icegreentea2 19 hours ago

        Plugging in 35k ft altitude, and 775 ft/s velocity here (https://www.spaceworks.aero/fcc2/index.html) gives dynamic pressure of 220 lb/ft2, vs ~2100 lb/ft2 for 1atm at sea level (the same calculator says 7k ft altitude has a static pressure of ~1600 lb/ft2, or rough idea of cabin air pressure).

        • WalterBright 18 hours ago

          The static pressure at 30,000 feet would have to be added in, around 550 lb/ft2, so it looks like the pressure inside is greater than outside.

          • the_arun 17 hours ago

            At that height if windows are damaged enough to hurt captain or pilot, would the flight lose balance because of air coming in? How did they land in that situation? There is no mention of that in the article.

            • Reason077 17 hours ago

              The laminated glass did not fully break. It appears only the inner layer shattered, and cabin pressure was not lost.

              It has happened before that cockpit windows have failed at altitude resulting in explosive decompression, and the plane still landed successfully. For example, British Airways Flight 5390:

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390

              • o11c 13 hours ago

                Hm, has something been done about the "cannot hear the radio" problem since then?

            • WalterBright 16 hours ago

              The airplane shouldn't be affected much by a blown out window. However, the blast in the captain's face might make it very difficult for him to see or even breath. If he could get his oxygen mask on, which I think has goggles, he should be ok.

            • ctippett 17 hours ago

              The article mentions there was no depressurisation, meaning the was no breach of the fuselage/windshield.

    • SoftTalker 20 hours ago

      Don't worry, if it can be blamed on Boeing, it will be.

      • pdabbadabba 19 hours ago

        Well, they do make satellites...

      • hsbauauvhabzb 20 hours ago

        Not unless you want to be spontaneously hit by a falling meteorite yourself in some kind of freak accident / suicide scenario.

ChaoPrayaWave 9 hours ago

If this is indeed man made space debris, who is responsible under current international rules? If it were to collide with a civilian aircraft and cause an air crash in the future, would there be an embarrassing situation where the culprit could not be found?

jbverschoor 19 hours ago

Out of all planes, it had to be the 737 max

  • conradev 18 hours ago

    On track to be the most popular model for US domestic travel, replacing the older 737s

    • herewulf 13 hours ago

      I'm sticking to Airbus for the foreseeable future. Though there are plenty of older Boeings still flying too.

    • hinkley 18 hours ago

      It’s gonna be like Honda Accord thefts. Super common car, with certain attributes that make is slightly more tempting.

  • bombcar 16 hours ago

    That’s why I only fly the 737 Pro Max.

    • bapak 9 hours ago

      Wouldn't the 737 Air have a lower chance of hitting debris head on?

      • bombcar 4 hours ago

        That one can only maintain the 520mph speed for a short time; crawling across the Atlantic under thermal throttling makes you long for the zeppelins.

  • cdelsolar 18 hours ago

    i remember i had a plane flight that was horrendously delayed once, and then finally when we hop on board they make an announcement about it being a 737 Max and I laughed, thinking they were joking...

Stevvo 19 hours ago

My first guess would a bird. Bird strikes happen all the time; there are billions of birds. Next guess would be a drone; there are a lot more drones flying around than spacecraft.

  • throwawayffffas 11 hours ago

    Unlikely to be either it's too high. Drones that can fly that high are typically the size of a small aircraft. And there are no bird bits stuck to the plane, no blood either.

    It could be parts of a weather balloon, or small meteor fragments, or even something that came off another plane flying slightly higher, but that would probably have been discovered already. Could be space debris as well, more likely if there was a launch around the same time.

  • michaelcampbell 18 hours ago

    At 36000'?

    • hinkley 18 hours ago

      Ruppell’s Griffon Vulture is the only bird clocked that high, but my understanding is that we’ve been moving estimates higher for a bunch of birds over the last couple of decades. Absence of proof and proof of absence and so forth. I think people have been paying more attention.

      That vulture looks like a big boy too. So not impossible.

      Edit: this bird is South American, adapted to the Andes, which is a bit of a hike to Colorado.

      • delfinom 15 hours ago

        Doubt birds can leave damage on the metal frame of the window like the case here. It looks like metal on metal contact

throwawayffffas 11 hours ago

> Whatever hit the plane, it was an enormously rare event and possibly the first time anything has collided with an aircraft at that altitude other than a projectile launched with that intended purpose.

There it goes the big sky theory once again, someone let the guy know there were six mid air collisions this year alone.

fracus 18 hours ago

Isn't the speed of descent of objects falling out of orbit so great they usually burn up before hitting the ground, and wouldn't that speed cause them to easily penetrate into the interior of the plane?

  • mikkupikku 18 hours ago

    If an object survives reentry far enough to be at airliner altitudes, it will have significantly slowed down already and probably be falling at or near terminal velocity. Of course it depends on the shape and density of the object.

    • mr_toad 3 hours ago

      Terminal velocity for a meteorite is still thousands of mph. It’s going to hit like a bullet.

theincredulousk 8 hours ago

If only the first layer of windshield was damaged how is the pilot getting hit by shrapnel

JCM9 18 hours ago

Not clear yet what happened but from the exterior photos it’s pretty obvious they struck something.

Space debris isn’t implausible, although there are several other possibilities too.

bigbrained124 13 hours ago

So normally your wounds don’t scab over instantaneously, what is the real story here? Obviously the majority of satellites are actually balloons/sataloons.

  • reorder9695 8 hours ago

    Most likely took the picture after landing the plane and sorting out paperwork, calling the company etc, that could be multiple hours no?

  • 542354234235 2 hours ago

    This conspiracy theory mindset is so interesting. How looking at that potato quality low-definition picture and thinking "they must be hiding the truth" and not "I am probably not getting a 100% accurate look at those wounds from this garbage image".

  • RyanOD 13 hours ago

    I didn't see any scabs. Wounds looked quite fresh to me.

ErikCorry 19 hours ago

Classic Azimov plot line

sandworm101 16 hours ago

My money is on drone.

There are more drones up there than falling rocks. There are probably more classified drones up there than falling rocket parts. I suspect this aircraft collided with something far more terrestrial. Something with its transponder off. Any chinese balloons over denver at the moment?

kleiba 21 hours ago

What are the odds?

  • seltzered_ 20 hours ago
    • tavavex 20 hours ago

      Much higher than a few decades back, but still effectively zero. Even after putting up X thousands of satellites up into orbit, they still physically cover a tiny total surface area. And the same goes for planes. So two of these colliding would be a monumental freak accident, which is why I'm still assuming it's not space debris until more information shows up.

  • michaelcampbell 18 hours ago

    Given that it happened, 100%?

    • cdelsolar 18 hours ago

      50-50, either it happens, or it doesn't

  • inopinatus 19 hours ago

    A million to one, they said.

    • PLenz 17 hours ago

      But it has to be _exactly_ a million to one

    • antod 19 hours ago

      That's if it was coming from Mars specifically.

stevage 10 hours ago

Title is now "United MAX Hit by Falling Object at 36,000 Feet"

saltyoldman a day ago

It definitely would more likely be a meteorite than anything else.

  • SteveNuts 20 hours ago

    What makes a meteorite more likely

    • schoen 20 hours ago

      Just that many more of them are present in the atmosphere than reentering space debris pieces.

      • JumpCrisscross 20 hours ago

        > many more of them are present in the atmosphere

        At 36,000 feet?

        • amelius 19 hours ago

          Why not? What comes down must come from somewhere up.

          • jackgavigan 10 hours ago

            Exactly! If you think about it, every meteorite has passed through 36,000 feet at some point!

      • natebc 19 hours ago

        still a lot more birds than meteorites or spacecraft.

        • throwawayffffas 11 hours ago

          There is usually blood on the plane when it's birds.

        • dboreham 18 hours ago

          There are not many birds at cruising altitude. Some, but not many.

          • natebc 6 hours ago

            still more than spaceships and meteorites!

            • mr_toad 4 hours ago

              Estimates vary, but a ballpark figure is 25 million meteors hitting the Earth every day.

    • doodlebugging 17 hours ago

      We are nearly at the peak of the annual Orionid meteor shower. [0] There should be a higher probability of encountering meteor debris during this period than during periods where there are no meteor showers in progress. We are passing through the debris from Halley's Comet right now and for about another two weeks.

      [0]https://www.space.com/stargazing/meteor-showers/orionid-mete...

JackAcid 19 hours ago

Dude's arm looks like scabs and I don't see anywhere that claims they are related to the impact.

  • sml156 17 hours ago

    Can you tell me why the left window appears to be held on with a really big paperclip.

  • autoexec 13 hours ago

    looks like dried blood to me.

  • delfinom 15 hours ago

    His arm is covered in sharpnel wounds from the windshield being shattered due to the energy of impact. That is how sharpnel wounds look like. There's a good chance he went to the hospital later to get the glass pulled out of his arm.

    • yokuze 4 hours ago

      From the article:

      > “Apparently only one layer of the windshield was damaged, and there was no depressurization.”

      And from the photos, it looks like it was the outer layer. So, where would the glass have come from?

russdill 19 hours ago

Could this be from another plane on the same nav route but higher altitude?

cdelsolar 18 hours ago

Anyone else think about that Asimov robot story with the "intuitive" robot "Jane"? She had discovered which stars were most likely to have planets around them with the right conditions for life and was flying back on an airplane with her human handler when it was hit by a meteorite.

L_226 10 minutes ago

SpaceX is testing a weapons system for clandestine assassinations /s

ecommerceguy 20 hours ago

Wasn't there a significant Starlink deorbiting recently?

neverkn0wsb357 17 hours ago

If this did happen to be space debris as a result of human activity then the likelihood that this becomes a more common occurrence is likely seeing how Kuiper and Starlink are looking to have somewhere around 42,000 satellites and it currently has around 8,000; Kuiper also has similar ambitions.

  • panick21_ 7 hours ago

    Older sats are more likely, they were designed with less eye towards burning up. But that also makes it less likely to happen.

  • ocdtrekkie 17 hours ago

    Even with that the odds of this have to be less likely than winning the lottery while getting bit by a shark that was simultaneously struck by lightning.

  • mlindner 17 hours ago

    Starlink satellites demise upon re-entry though so they're not going to be the cause.

    • kopirgan 13 hours ago

      They were busy demising until the plane interrupted the demising?!

      • JumpCrisscross 11 hours ago

        > They were busy demising until the plane interrupted the demising?!

        Too low. Debris burns up in the mesosphere and upper stratosphere. Airlines cruise about halways down from there.