  We compare two different formalisms for modeling the energy deposition of
macroscopically sized/massive quark nuggets (a.k.a. macros) in the Earth's
atmosphere. We show that for a reference mass of 1 g, there is a discrepancy in
the macro luminosity of about 14 orders of magnitude between the predictions of
the two formalisms. Armed with our finding we estimate the sensitivity for
macro detection at space-based (Mini-EUSO and POEMMA) and suborbital
(EUSO-SPB2) experiments.
