Originally Posted by JohnBurke

About a year and a half ago, about half way between Honolulu and LAX, someone came up on 123.45 and asked, "anyone know how to take evasive action for falling rocket debris?" I though that a stupid question (obvious answer is, you don't), but was also curious about what prompted it. As an idle back-and forth began by bored souls on the radio, I watched an aircraft pass over head, overtaking, moving from behind, and crossing paths right to left. I made out two white lights at the wingtip, didn't see red or green, and didn't pay a lot of attention initially, other than to note that it appeared to be 2,000 to 4,000 above us (based on the distance between the two lights), same direction, definitely faster (we were .83 M1). Once past me, on my left, it seemed to accelerate, and shortly I realized it was two objects traveling at what appeared to be the same rate, side by side. They accelerated, and the one on the right got brighter, and I saw what looked like "petals" or a series of geometric shapes, which at the time I took to be an afterburner. My thought was that it was two aircraft in formation, and one lit the can. Shortly after that, it exploded, followed by the one on the left.

That caused a lot of excitement on the radio, both on 123.45, and on 121.5. It became apparent, when the objects exploded, that the distance and altitude was misleading, and these were a lot higher and farther out. My impression then was that they'd been celestial, orbital. Reports began of CPDLC messages alerting to falling rocket debris, apparently the result of a Chinese something or other gone wrong. Shortly after that NOTAM information was passed on, and when I plotted the area, it was west of San Diego. I knew that wasn't right, as I'd seen it to the north of me, and crews going into SFO were reporting what looked like "pixie dust," which I took to mean a lot of debris making entry. Whatever broke up was in a lot of pieces, and scattered over a fairly broad area. I looked for other debris, but didn't see it.

When I was a kid, UFO's were interesting, and I'd have liked to believe in extraterrestrial craft, and visitors. Like most, over the years, I've seen traffic that I couldn't identify, which technically, by definition, makes it unidentified. Today, when someone tells me about their UFO experiences, and their belief in extraterrestrial visitors building pyramids and the Nazca lines, and so on, or more recently someone described to me their belief that the moon is a hollow metal sphere full of "aliens," I simply take them for a fool and an idiot, and dismiss them without much more thought. I lump them in the same category as the conspiracy fruitcakes.