Gregory's ServerMy MP never called me. Not sure whether to be annoyed (because my MP personally called back an old white farmer dude who found space junk but not a woman scientist who studies it), or relieved (because I don't actually want to talk to my conservative MP, who I disagree with on just about everything).
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 WELL I just looked at the cute little prairie newsletter in my inbox from The Flatlander https://theflatlander.ca/ and uh... that's me in the picture for story number 2, despite me not having been interviewed by them. Time for bed! Turns out I've had a giant misunderstanding with someone who's been talking about going out to find pieces and map out the debris field... I thought they were planning to come here, but they were actually asking me to price out my "university research services" doing the fieldwork. My university doesn't have magical "research services" to do fieldwork, and I'm the only astronomer, so it would just be ME. That is...a lot to ask me to do, especially since I'm not trained for this...sigh. I talked to Barry again this morning. He wasn't able to convince SpaceX to give him any more than $5k, but he convinced them to give $5k per piece, and he+family found 3. They are supposedly coming to pick it up from him early next week (but that's what he said last weekend when I talked to him, so who knows... I'd imagine this is a cross-border logistical nightmare and I'm glad SpaceX has to deal with that). Apparently SpaceX made him write them an official invoice?? He said his whole payment will go to the Ituna skating rink. He was hoping for more, but I guess this is all he's going to get from a company owned by a fucking BILLIONAIRE. While there are many things I'd rather raise money for, I'm quite tempted to start a fundraiser for the Ituna skating rink, just to show that communties are way better than billionaires... hmmm I'll have to think more about this. My MP didn't call me back, CSA says local law enforcement should deal with it, and I even called the "Saskatchewan Poachers and Polluters" hotline and the Ministry of Environment yesterday and neither of them wanted to touch this.... so I still have no idea what people are supposed to do when they find space junk. It's going to become a LOT more common to find space junk, and I sure hope the answer isn't "just wait for SpaceX to track you down," because that seems to be the answer right now. One aspect of this story I haven't really let myself get angry about until just now: this particular SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk that dropped garbage on Sask. was from the Axiom 3 "private astronaut mission." "Private astronaut" = billionaire space tourist. Billionaires own companies that other billionaires pay for joy rides that drop potentially lethal garbage on us from orbit. This is fine. I already knew billionaires are horrible, but this particular situation really lays it out starkly. |
Got an email from my MP's office saying they'll forward the email on to the actual MP to read. So... maybe I'll have to talk to him today haha.
Now I'm trying to figure out an email chain with someone in the Canadian gov't who actually wants to come out here and look for debris, but they email only in bureaucrat-ese so I'm not even sure exactly what they're asking or when they might come or who to ask for help... This could be very interesting, or really frustrating and weird, not sure...