Pop Goes The Starlink?

     I'm reading this morning that another Starlink satellite has fallen apart in orbit, cause unknown.  Just a sudden cloud of debris.

     It's not believed to be of any risk to the Artemis circumlunar mission set to launch soon -- but every loose bolt in orbit is a potential problem until its orbit decay and it falls back to Earth (if it ever does), usually burning up in a blaze of glory.  Starlink satellites orbit low enough that a few shooting stars are the most likely outcome -- but I have to admit, more and more, it appears that heedless fools are filling up the sky with overly-fragile junk, and that's not a good situation.

     And none of them are more prolific at it -- or more heedless -- than Elon Musk's SpaceX.  Look, I wish he was a combination of Tony Stark and Robert Goddard, too, but the reality is, he's a talented promoter who isn't otherwise qualified to do so much as polish either man's shoes, fictional or real.

     Progress advances on the backs of flashy mountebanks at least as much as it is carried by talented engineers and scientists, and some men are even both at once.  (Edison, Tesla, this part is about you.)  But we need to be clear-eyed about it; one interval of tetraethyl lead was way more than enough.

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     As for the Artemis mission itself, I wish them godspeed and good fortune, but I'm not kidding you, I'm going to worry the entire time from launch to splashdown.  There's a reason the term "moonshot" is a synonym for high risk/high reward ventures.