[John Jamieson]

I also did 3" solid cubes of Aluminum and Steel. The AL hits 270 miles down range at 145mph and the Steel 318 miles down range at 245mph. All the debris should be within 100 to 300 miles of where it left the vehicle, and all of it should have come straight down.

John

[bonesmccoy]

Interesting John.
Your estimate happened to be with the altitude and velocity of the object which probably separated from the vehicle over Sacramento and was observed by the astronomer.

If we believe that this is a piece of aluminum or steel, it is laying between 270 miles to 318 miles down range from the brightening observed by the astronomer.

If the event occured at NASA's 13:53:46 GMT (32.5) datapoint, the object is laying on the ground somewhere between 270 to 319 miles from that point in the trajectory.

I plotted the datapoint 32.5 and datapoint 33.
Datapoint 33 appears to be about 98.8 miles distant.
Datapoint 35.5 is approximately 158 miles from datapoint 32.5.
Datapoint 37.7 is approximately 279 miles from datapoint 32.5.

If the object separated at datapoint 32.5 and fell 270 miles down range, the object is likely laying somewhere near Tonopah, Nevada near 37.95657 deg North, 117.04854 West. This estimate is based upon drawing a straight line on a MapPoint map. However, the actual trajectory is not a straight line, but it is curved.

If the object was steel and fell 318 miles down range, the debris should be near 37.81907 North, 116.20568 West.

If your calculations are correct, the object is on the ground East of Nevada-95 and southeast of Tonopah.