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China Space

China Criticized For 'Unplanned' Tumbling of Its Booster Rockets Back to Earth (msn.com) 99

China launched the final module for its space station last Monday. But this also meant that a massive booster rocket re-entered the earth's atmosphere, notes the Washington Post — "for the fourth time in less than three years."

This one came down in the Pacific Ocean shortly after 6 a.m. Friday, and "there were no initial reports of damage or injuries. "But its return to Earth highlighted a tension among space faring nations over China's practice of letting its spent rockets tumble back to Earth after days in orbit." While the chances are low of any one person getting hit by the returning space debris, several of the tracks the rocket possibly could have taken passed over a large swath of the Earth's populated areas. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has repeatedly condemned China for the practice. In a statement Friday morning, he said: "It is critical that all spacefaring nations are responsible and transparent in their space activities and follow established best practices, especially, for the uncontrolled reentry of a large rocket body debris — debris that could very well result in major damage or loss of life."

China is alone among space-faring nations in allowing the unplanned return of its boosters, instead of ditching them at sea, as most others do, or returning them to a soft landing, like Space X. "The technology exists to prevent this," said Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant in the chief engineer's office at the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit that drew possible tracks for the rocket's return. The rest of the world doesn't "deliberately launch things this big and intend them to fall wherever. We haven't done that for 50 years."

As of Wednesday, the [research nonprofit] Aerospace Corporation's calculations had the stage possibly landing over areas of land where 88 percent of the world's population lives. And so the possibility of casualties, Muelhaupt said, was between one in 230 to one in 1,000. That risk far exceeds the internationally recognized standard that says a reentering space object should not have greater than a one in 10,000 chance of causing injury.

The Chinese rocket stage is massive — weighing 22 metric tons and measuring as long as a pair of 53-foot semitrailers parked end to end, Muelhaupt said. He estimated that between 10 and 40 percent of the booster would survive reentry.

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China Criticized For 'Unplanned' Tumbling of Its Booster Rockets Back to Earth

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  • Headlines resorting to reporting reactions to an event, instead of the actual fucking event, should summarize the fucking event, and not the fucking reactions to said event.
    • It seems to have gotten a reaction out of you. Mission accomplished, and they appreciate all that you are.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The simple fact of the matter is that it splashed down in the Pacific ocean. Nobody was injured. Dumping in the ocean is what many other countries do to. China issues the appropriate warnings to avoid the area.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That is a simple fact, but it's not the only one. Another simple fact of the matter is that Spain closed part of its airspace, delaying 300 flights [reuters.com] because the risk of an impact with the uncontrolled stage was above that considered acceptable.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        They didn't plan it to come down in the ocean. In fact, on an earlier occasion, debris landed near a village. This time it happened to fall into the ocean, which is the most likely result because there's so much more ocean than land, but it could just as well have hit land, the location is basically random.

        Other countries perform a deorbit burn to set up a trajectory that ends in the ocean. Only takes a very small amount of fuel.

      • Why are you trying to paper over CCP apathy and incompetence?

        It's ok that they are uncaring, stupid and incompetent because "this time" nothing happened?

        Jfc.....

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Because I don't underestimate the CCP. If they are stupid and incompetent then why is China such a huge threat to us? Why was a trade war needed if they are so dumb? How come Huawei beat everyone else to the punch on 5G? How come they have the best battery technology?

          Because so many people think like you, imagining some weird moustache twirling villains running things, we are finding it hard to compete. It also results in poor policy decisions when people don't understand what motivates the CCP.

          You describe

          • If they care about their image then why did they drop the booster at random?

            Why did they shoot up satellites in orbit and fill already busy orbital space with even more space junk? That was good for their image?

            Yes they care about their image but only after everything else. They got lucky this time. It was an uncontrolled de-orbit which could have landed anywhere and on anyone. What are you going to say if they aren't lucky one of these times? That's the nature of luck. Eventually someone wins the lot

      • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday November 07, 2022 @09:19AM (#63031637)

        No. China doesn't issue warnings to avoid the area because they don't know the target area. That's the whole point. Other nations target specific points of the pacific ocean to crash these. China lets them roll around the world and hope they hit a patch of water.

        If a drunk blindfolded person walks into a bar pulls out a gun spins and shoots unaimed and happens to hit the bullseye of a target, you don't go around and tell everyone that it was a safe practice because everyone aims at the bullseye.

      • No, China did NOT--and could not--issue the appropriate warnings to avoid the area, because they didn't know until the last moment where it might come down--and it's too late to move a few thousand miles out of the way at that point. Yes, it happened to come down in the Pacific, but that was sheer luck, aided by the fact that the surface of the Earth is something like 65% water. The only way to be sure to avoid hitting populated areas is to do a controlled re-entry, which other space-faring nations do. C

    • Summary of the event: "China lets boosters tumble to earth". It's right there in The Fucking Headline.

      • No, it's "China Criticized for blah blah blah". THAT'S the news that the headline is reporting.

        Learn some fucking english, dipshit. Everyone else literally understood that's what I was talking about. You are the ONLY one who DELIBERATELY chose to misunderstand.
    • Headlines resorting to reporting reactions to an event, instead of the actual fucking event, should summarize the fucking event, and not the fucking reactions to said event.

      I don't know enough about rocket launches to know that "unplanned" tumbling of the boosters back to earth is considered dangerous or irresponsible enough to be worthy of criticism.

      The fact that a wide group of knowledgeable people is criticizing China for this practice is newsworthy and helps my understanding of the story.

  • by twosat ( 1414337 ) on Monday November 07, 2022 @04:08AM (#63031031)

    There's a spacecraft graveyard in the South Pacific between New Zealand and South America that's used for safely disposing of defunct spacecraft.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sc... [dailymail.co.uk]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • The Chinese rocket stage is massive - weighing 22 metric tons and measuring as long as a pair of 53-foot semitrailers parked end to end

    I know they are presumably quoting the guy directly, but I guess even few Americans have a good idea what a semitrailer is. Good thing he included some measurements.

    So the quote could actually have read The Chinese rocket stage is massive - weighing as much as 5 African elephants piled on top of each other and measuring 32 metric meters, which would have been much more info

    • by Entrope ( 68843 )

      weighing as much as 5 African elephants piled on top of each other and measuring 32 metric meters

      How many non-metric meters does it measure? Does it measure with a tape measure, a metre stick, or something else? Do African elephants weigh more or less when piled on top of each other than when standing in a line?

  • "wonz ze rockets are up, who cares where they come down"...

    I guess he correctly predicted that von Braun was learning Chinese.

  • China is like the dumb kid who has just enough resources to mimic the smart kids but doesn't know what he's doing and winds up burning the neighborhood down.
    • Think again, the smart kids are becoming (nah, they already are) the dumb kids which is why the US is banning technology export to China.
      • Please explain why banning tech exports to a country run by evil people is a bad thing.

        • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          It isn't its just daft post-christian moral relativism that passes for enlightenment these days. "Oh deer we are not perfect so we can't question the absolute horror shows of others.."

          "remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye." - I don't think was to imply we should ignore/condone/excuse the sins of others. Rather it was an admonishment to prioritize work on ourselves.

          In the grand scheme of things it would be silly, and wrong of us to g

  • Um, I think they might have done a bit of planning..... But yes, this does need to change. And so does a lot more, how about a truly International Space Program where people actually work together for peaceful purposes? Imagine what the human race could achieve! Instead of all this petty squabbling that does no-one any good. But also, for all the huffing and puffing on this topic, lets not forget the last reports of space junk landing in Australia, whose was it? And no it did not land in 'the outback', the
    • There is a big difference between a whole booster, dropping tens of tonnes of debris onto the earth's surface, and a lightweight trunk section jettisoned from a manned spacecraft, dropping tens of kilograms of debris.

      Also important is that the reason they don't de-orbit the Dragon trunk as soon as it is finished with is that doing so would cause extra risk to human life. The engines to do the de-orbit are in the capsule, so it would de-orbit near the capsule, creating risks. And U.S. capsules re-enter over

      • A big booster like this is mostly empty space and the big parts burn up - break into fluttering parts - before the ground. The parts that reach the ground and are dangerous are the high density parts such as engines, but even then, when the shuttle broke up on re-entry for instance, the danger to earth is pretty low.
    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      how about a truly International Space Program where people actually work together for peaceful purposes?

      Are the 'peaceful purposes' to space really? Communications and some research that gains from not being inside the atmosphere is about it. Nobody who is capable of meaningful participation in an international program really needs 'help' doing com satellites at this point.

      Basic physics says we are not leaving the solar system for any kind of economic ends EVER, that always be one-way tips, sorry dreamers just nothing else in the cards there. Fundamentally Space is about pressing some national political/econ

  • Boeing and Ford etc do - Pay up when they kill someone as its cheaper
  • by RemindMeLater ( 7146661 ) on Monday November 07, 2022 @07:35AM (#63031335)
    They are a bad-faith actor on the world stage. Seize the entire South China Sea, lie about militarizing its artificial islands. Genocide the Uyghurs. Plans to conquer the peaceful democratic island nation of Taiwan. Accidentally releases (in all likelihood) a virus that kills 6+ million and then denies, denies, denies.

    You think they care where their rocket lands? Please.
  • They basically did a risk-analysis and found it not worth the effort to do better. They are probably right too.

  • The US space program has languished for years as a pork program. Now with some competition, Congress will have to prioritize actually DOING THINGS over pork.

Let the machine do the dirty work. -- "Elements of Programming Style", Kernighan and Ritchie

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