Chinese Satellite Crashes Into House

toggleflipflop writes "In China, a returning satellite crashed into a house. No one was hurt. More details in this article. Apparently inhabited by an eternal optimist: 'The satellite landed in our home. Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year,' the tenant of the wrecked apartment was quoted as saying by the newspaper. According to the People's Daily's article on the subject nothing seems to have gone wrong."

Re:I don't understand

[Microlith]

Knowing how deeply the government of China truly cares for its people, I imagine it was more a case of "his house was in our target landing zone" as opposed to "we missed our target landing zone and hit his house."

The chinese sure are optimists

[kuzb]

Only in China would someone take a large hunk of metal destroying their home as a sign of good luck. The rest of us would probably be thinking that some higher power hates us.

Re:First Image

[I_Love_Pocky!]

As opposed to the corporate-run media in the US? You should never trust any media outlet completely.

Re:I don't understand

[travdaddy]

"The landing technology of our country's satellites is very mature and the precision of the landing point is among the best in the world. Members of the public need not worry about this," it also said, quoting Chinese space experts.

Allow me to translate that from government-speak: "Nothing to see here. Move along."

That's better than the Russians!

[djblair]

"According to the People's Daily's article on the subject nothing seems to have gone wrong."

Obviously SOMETHING went wrong, and the Chineese Govt doesn't want to fess up.

There's nothing like good old government-controlled press. I'm glad to see communism is still alive and well.

Of course it was a spy satellite!

[Anonymous Coward]

China's spy satellites still use film. They deorbit them in order to retrieve the images.

Eternal optimist? Nah.

[sssmashy]

'The satellite landed in our home. Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year.

Eternal optimist? I doubt it. I'm sure the villager bit his tongue, and wisely refrained from voicing his true opinion.

It's all relative. A broken roof is a minor inconvenience compared to ten years in prison for criticizing the government.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

It all depends on which region of China you are referring to in your post. Living in the easternmost provinces of China one will find space to be at a premium considering the density. As one moves further out west there's more land but at the reduction of the quality of life.

Not quite an optimist

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine the owner of the home was speaking in Chinese, so the translator is likely the optimist.

Re:Validity of info?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why should we believe this information coming out of a country renowned for its "editing of the truth"?

this didnt happen in the US, did it?

Re:You believe what you read?

[kingkade]

I think that if this happened in the US, the guy would be on MSNBC. And probably put the fucking thing on ebay. Maybe suing the government for rights to it since it landed on his property and maybe even suing them for tresspassing. All the while, Johnny Cochran is speaking at a press conference for him saying something clever. All this commotion would, of course, ensure his 15 minutes and his appearance on Larry King promoting his new book, When Satellites Attack. Maybe even a movie's in the works. Somthing to think about.

Re:Crappy Chinese-made products

[jrockway]

The iPod is made in China. I think it's not a matter of it being Chinese so much as it being cheap. You buy cheap stuff, you get cheap stuff. That's how life works. :)

Re:Eternal optimist? Nah.

[NanoGator]

"It's all relative. A broken roof is a minor inconvenience compared to ten years in prison for criticizing the government."

Or maybe he was just thinking "What are the odds of me having something happen that's WORSE that my house being destroyed by a satellite this year?"

Friends and family

[MMaestro]

Or he really could have 'good luck' for the year. After all, if you suddenly heard that your brother or your friend's house suddenly burned down with no insurance, chances are you'd at least let him sleep over your house for a couple days. This is China where family is still considered to be the center, not the USA where family is just what you leech off of till you get a job/till you get kicked out.

Doesn't this remind you of...

[nusratt]

George Bush?

"According to the People's Daily's article on the subject nothing seems to have gone wrong."

Just like Iraq...

Re:First Image

[Anonymous Coward]

And how that is different from the american media reporting what the WhiteHouse tells them?

they probably just reported what the government said, before finding out that something else had happened

Re:I wonder...

[dapyx]

Yes, they have deserts larger than the state of Texas, mountainous areas almost uninhabited as big as California. (see the NASA WorldWind)

However, retrieving it from there might be a pain in the ass.

They probably aimed at a region not very far from the civilization, but they obviously missed.

Re-entry capsule: what's inside?

[aheikkinen]

According to sources mentioned above, the capsule is a re-entry vehicle and it stayed completely intact. Actually it came down via parachute.

That satellite from which this capsule was dropped off has been up there for only last 18 days. My guess is that it hasn't got anything to do with science and very much with military intelligence.

For good part of the cold war both US and USSR used capsules to relay back intel images as radio and camera technology was not yet enough mature to do the job right. The chinese might still be (atleast partially) using robust methods which are proven to work - same with their manned missions.

People managing their space program are definately calculating re-entry trajectories carefully so they know atleast approximately where the retrieval point is. No way they would drop a capsule by accident to populated areas.

I'd say it was a hastened retrieval of latest intelligence, someone needed those images very badly and was ready to take the risk.

Just my two cents.

Re:Validity of info?

[Ellis D. Tripp]

[quote]Although many many disagree, the US government doesn't actually control the news media.[/quote]

Correct. Here in the land of the "free market", private corporations control both the news media AND the government. Much more efficient, you see...

What are the chances

[dfrick]

that a satellite crashed on Chinese soil and didn't hit a person?

Re:No thanks.

[balloonhead]

But at least in a lot of Western countries, if the government or whatever agency crashed something into your house, you might get it insured through them. I'm sure NASA would front up some cash for a rebuild, seeing as they are responsible ultimately. Not much cash in the total budget of a satellite anyway, a few tens of thousand for a new roof and a wall or two.

I'm not so sure that the People's Republic would be so forthcoming with a rebuild. Then again, if everyone's equal in a communist society, maybe they all want their house destroyed by a satellite for luck and equality?

Astrology tradition

[Maljin Jolt]

According chinese traditional astrology, such event is considered very lucky, because of involvment of heaven element. So the guy's reasoning is very rational in paradigm of his culture. All those of you americans who are slashing and bashing chinese government propaganda in this thread, think at first about your own culture paradigms and government propaganda rooted in them, they are far more dangerous to anybody as well as to you yourself.

Re:First Image

[bobbozzo]

What about the phone?
There are millions of Chinese living outside China, and many of them talk to their relatives in China regularly on the phone.

I am sure they'll get some money to rebuild

[Anonymous Coward]

However, they have to respect the rules of the game. If they criticise the government they wont get anything and even go to jail. What's the big deal? The same happens all over the world, everybody has to respect the local rules and customs and then everything is OK. The only difference is that there are different rules in different countries.

My first 41 years of my life, until 1990, I lived in an East European country. I was just a regular citizen, I was not a Party member but I did not mind communism at all. I knew that if I respected the rules of the game, I would be safe, I would be treated correctly and nothing would happen to me. Westerners have some strange ideas that life was unsafe, there were no rules, everybody could go to jail, etc. FALSE! IF YOU RESPECTED THE (UNSPOKEN) RULES YOU WERE FINE!. You could make all political jokes you wanted, tell them to your friends, etc it did not matter. If you crossed the line and tried to broadcast them to strangers. (illegal radio, flyers, whatever) of course you went to jail. Anyway I was too busy with my life (like almost everydody else) and thus I decided it was not worth becoming a revolutionary. Otherwise my life was not that different from that of a westerner. I dated girls, went to parties, got married, got two children, etc. I had a house, a car, went every year on vacation, etc. Life was not great but was not bad either (it could have been much worse). From colleagues who went on bussiness in North Korea we heard all kinds of horror stories, no private life, living in dorms, eating in mensas, etc. That would have been horrible! Nothing like that happened in my country, we had our own private, normal lifes. The only thing we were supposed to do was to respect ther rules, it was not a big deal.

Re:Nothing wrong?

[grainofsand]

I think it is just the opposite. The Party Secretary of the small town turned up with a fist full of renminbi shortly after the satellite crashed to make sure that the occupier said the right things when the reporters turn up.

Re:No thanks.

[kd5ujz]

We are talking about luck, not statistics. A coin coming up heads or tails is one thing, you know if its heads or tails. A satellite crashing through your roof is another. It could have been bad, but hell, in the US people would be writing up long lists of shit they did not have. "Um, that laptop was a panasonic tough book" when the damn thing was a $699 dell special. Hell, it could have killed a burgler. Common sense tells us its a bad thing, but it might be good. The GOV might finaly replace the damn leaky toilet, and the guy will definatly have a new roof.

Re:The chinese sure are optimists

[identity0]

...or, only in China would the state punish someone severely for criticizing an obvious government screwup like this.

Of course, he could actually think it's lucky. Who knows, maybe he stole some parts of it and is going to sell it on the black market. And the state might actually compensate him well for damages, since this is so high profile.

Remembering history...

[tehanu]

Maybe the guy was just remembering the famous story of what happened 2000 years ago with the meteorite that landed during the First Emperor's time. Someone scrawled on it a curse to the First Emperor hoping that he'd die soon and in retaliation the Emperor ordered everyone in the village to be executed. So maybe the guy was thinking, "Well considering what happened *last* time something from space landed in someone's home and they criticised the government in response, maybe I'll just some inane comment about good luck instead..."

Re:First Image

[808140]

No, instead we systematically inacted a widespread "final solution" to the "Indian problem", genocide on such an incredibly wide scale that we're still too embarassed to make much more than a passing reference to it in standard education.

Instead we benefited from legal slavery longer than any other western nation.

Instead, we torched women and children (entire villages, on purpose) during Vietnam.

And while we're on the subject of opening fire on protesters, let's not forget about the incident with Gandhi's followers and the British, on a similarly massive scale. Oh but wait, the British are our allies, so it's ok, right?

None of this makes Tiananmen right, because, as your mom probably told you, two wrongs don't make a right. But as an American living in China, frankly, sometimes I don't see such a huge difference between our governments in practice; only in ideology.

Ideology is definitely worth something. But don't pretend like our shit doesn't stink, but it sure as hell does. To criticize others effectively, we must be receptive to criticism ourselves.

Funny how..

[Anonymous Coward]

...any article about China turns into a China-bashing orgy.

I have a feeling it's not that we want to make another country look dumb, but rather to make ourselves feel racially or culturally superior, even if it's not justified. (which it never should be)

more likely..

[emmons]

They probably didn't want to shoot it down because a plane that crashes because it runs out of fuel is left much more intact than a plane with fuel that is shot down. The US would have wanted as much of the plane intact as possible in order to study its capabilities.

Re:First Image

[808140]

Your example would unfortunately prove nothing, because unless I were a widespread organizer, the government would rightly see me as mostly non-threatening. It is entirely possible that if I were obnoxious about it, I might be asked not to wear it by someone in a position of authority. If I refused, I would probably unceremoniously be asked to leave the country, as I am not Chinese.

But your point in a certain sense is well taken, because obviously, the USA is a nominally free society whereas the PRC makes no claims of being one. No one in their right mind would literally mean that the governments of the PRC and the USA are similarly repressive; but then that's why my comparison was prefaced with a modifying "sometimes".

In the same way that the slogan, "The USA: better than North Korea" has no substantial value, comparing the state of civic liberties in the PRC to the USA and using the USA's better track record as an indication of superiority is a useless exercise. Of course the USA is better than the PRC where personal freedoms are concerned. This goes without saying.

What is productive is the same comparison made in the other direction. If the PRC fails to meet the USA's standards, no one is surprised; it is when the USA is either the same or inferior to a country like the PRC that we need to begin worrying.

Comparisons of the USA's current state of civic freedoms to the PRC, the DPRK, or Mussolini's Italy are all hyperbole and should be treated as such. The purpose of such comparisons is to underscore the inadvisability of taking such reforms to extremes. Our current erosion of the civil liberties, for example, smacks of totalitarianism. To illustrate the point, I might say that the USA's current standards of something or other are equivalent to the PRC's -- this is meant to alarm you, not instigate a "but the PRC is worse than we are in terms of x, y, and z."

In summary, my point was that the original poster's retort (which essentially was, "The USA is better than the PRC because we don't roll tanks over students") was an oversimplified, propaganda-worthy comparison. It was one of those facile categorizations like, "You're either with us or with the terrorists", or "Things are either good or evil, black or white".

This kind of on/off true/false binary logic demonstratably fails with most real world concepts.

While the Tiananmen square massacre was lamentable, to simply state the USA is better because we have not similarly silenced protesting students is overlooking the huge number of horrible things we have done.

The PRC has many flaws; no one I know denies this -- even the Chinese. But Americans for some reason are wont to deny their own country's significant blunders.

To much of the rest of the world, China did not invade Iraq, or destabilize the entire continent of Latin America for their personal gain, or fight largely hopeless proxy battles with the former USSR in order to stop the spread of communism, because after all, we can't have vassal states choosing their own leaders or system of government. Free elections were never held in South Vietnam because of overwhelming popular support for Ho Chi Minh, etc. We face the same problem now in Iraq -- sure, we can have democracy, but what kind of leaders will the Iraqis elect? Most likely an Islamofacist one.

China's great flaws are these: a poor human rights record and a lack of personal freedoms. Of course, the nation griping the most loudly about the former is one of the few in the developed world that still executes inmates on a regular basis, and is also the one that was responsible for use of torture in Iraq. We may not be in the same league as China in this regard, but to much of the rest of the world, we are seen as a bully criticizing another bully for similar actions.

Regarding its lack of personal freedoms: this mostly means that political speech is not universally protected. Otherwise, you are welcome to sa

Re:First Image

[glesga_kiss]

In China, the media IS the government. Not the case in the US.

Not a Fox News watcher then, are ya bud?