where is all terminal output sent if the controlling terminal is closed?

[Anton Shterenlikht]

I occasionally build ports with extra logs enabled.
When I then launch such programs from, say xterm
on the background (&), I get lots of output on
the controlling terminal. If I then close the
terminal, where does all the output goes?
I presume it's still being sent to the PID
of the parent xterm. But this process no
longer exists, so what happens then?

Thanks
Anton