Well that was lucky. Early reports suggest the Chinese space junk from the launch four days ago has crashed in the Pacific 1,000 km short of Mexico. However, if I am reading those maps (below) correctly, on this uncontrolled reentry it only missed Australia and New Zealand by half an hour, and just a few minutes later and it would have “landed” somewhere in Mexico or maybe Florida. (Now that would have been a November surprise).
Despite what China says, this is not what the rest of the world does:
China Lucks Out Again as Out-of-Control Rocket Booster Falls in the Pacific
Kenneth Chang, New York Times
It was China’s latest round of celestial roulette involving a deliberate uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry. The rocket stage, by design, did not include a system to guide it into a specific spot on Earth, far away from people.
“The thing I want to point out about this is that we, the world, don’t deliberately launch things this big intending them to fall wherever,” Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant for the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit group largely financed by the U.S. government that performs research and analysis, said in a news conference on Wednesday. “We haven’t done that for 50 years.”
There’s a callous attitude of disregard here in these excuses:
However, Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesman, on Friday rejected the notion that China’s handling of the Long March 5B rockets represented anything unusual. “I would like to stress that China has always carried out activities in the peaceful use of outer space in accordance with international law and international practice — re-entry of the last stage of a rocket is an international practice,” he said.
Mr. Zhao added that the Long March 5B had been designed to pose less danger upon re-entry. The rocket “is designed with special technology; most of the components will burn up and be destroyed during the re-entry…
It broke no laws because there are no international laws on reentry. This is not “international practice”, and if it had crashed in a populated area, it would have killed people.
Whew! 23-ton Chinese rocket debris falls to Earth over Pacific Ocean
Brett Tingley, Space.com
Other rockets are designed with measures in place to ensure their core stages are steered into the ocean after launch, while others like SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9, are designed to come down in one piece and be reused. China’s most powerful rocket has no such measures in place.
Unfortunately, there are no international agreements in place to prevent these incidents from occurring again in the future, said Marlon Sorge, Executive Director for The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies during a media briefing on Wednesday (Nov. 2). “And the reality is there aren’t any real laws, treaties, internationally that govern what you’re allowed to do in terms of reentry,” Sorge said
And past crashes did leave debris:
China, like always refuses to take responsibility for its falling rocket, instead claiming that it will burn up on re-entry. However, on three separate occasions, metal from their rockets has made impact on the Earth. Once, they managed to damage an entire village.
On the three previous launches by the Chinese space agency where they have used a similar rocket, back in 2020, 2021, and 2022, large chunks of debris damaged villages in the Republic of Cote d’Ivoire, fell into the Indian Ocean, and landed near villages in Borneo, respectively. Fortunately, no one has yet been injured by this falling debris.
300 flights over Spain were delayed while they waited for the space junk to pass over.
According to Alex on twitter, “The Chinese #CZ5B rocket flew over Catalonia a while ago at a height of 148 km and a speed of more than 28,000 km/h.” Which makes it 140 km above most planes. Still, at some point, 23 ton objects moving at Mach 22 through your airspace will surely be breaking some laws.
Flights were cleared north of Madrid.
US Aerospace published a prediction of the last hours of this space hazard
Judging by reports, it went over northern Spain, past the UAE, over Western Australia and New Zealand and then crashed 1000 km short of Mexico.
Note the tick marks on the path show how far this travels in five minutes. It was a 35 minute flight from Spain to Australia. (I wish I’d known to look out the window as it went past Perth).
Click to enlarge | Aerospace
China does not know how to play diplomat, and is not even trying. It is treating the world like a trash can. Careless with rockets. Careless with viruses.
How much more would it have cost to add in the last stage small burner to control that reentry?
Apparently China will try this again next year.
UPDATE: For those who believe CCP promises that the craft will burn up, here is past debris.
Shoo 👀 A cropland in Gansu got struck by a large chunk of Long March 2D Y72 debris Twitter
UPDATE: #2 Jonathon McDowell Astrophysicist at Harvard says of the photo above that “The debris …is a suborbital stage of the orbital launch, so more intact that a typical orbital debris reentry.”
Rocket debris believed to be from China’s Long March 5B (CZ-5B) booster rocket were found by fishermen near the Mindoro Strait, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) confirmed. (Photo courtesy of PCG Station Mamburao)
UPDATE #2:
MV wisely points out these are not blackened. Apparently they are likely space trash from “suborbital” parts early after the launch. They don’t show whether a 23 ton stage would burn up but they do show that the CCP treats the world like its trash can.
But other parts appear to have crashed on land in 2020, showing that the CCP are not being honest when they claim their reentries burn up:
… See the Newsweek story. McDowell says the timing and location suggest it might be.
“For a large object like this, dense pieces like parts of the rocket engines could survive reentry and crash to Earth,” McDowell told CNN. “Once they reach the lower atmosphere they are traveling relatively slowly, so worst case is they could take out a house.” ““I conclude that the objects seen in Mahounou, and at least some of the other objects from the Cote d’Ivore region whose photos are being circulated in African media, are very likely parts of the Chinese rocket stage,” McDowell wrote on Twitter.”
It was an 18 ton stage, and there was seismic evidence supporting debris hitting the ground too.
Not only is China polluting the planet with pollution from its industry, including toxic by-products related to solar panels for the West and rare earth metals for windmill magnets for the West it is also polluting space.
For ignorant people who believe in the anthropogenic global warming fraud it is also the world’s biggest polluter of what the Left call “carbon” (sic) but a blind eye is turned to this supposed atmospheric “pollutant” because there is double standards for China.
China treats space with reckless disregard for orbital debris.
E.g. remember when they did an anti-satellite missile test creating a huge cloud of orbital debris.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test?wprov=sfla1
And one of the biggest sources of ocean borne plastic comes from the Yangtze river, NOT THE WEST. But ignorant Leftists blame the West and ban conveniences like free supermarket bags.
China is the biggest environmental destroyer of the planet, and beyond, by far.
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Good points David and I wonder if China will show up at COP 27 and will that whopping big personal polluter Kerry and other polluting liars even mention China and will they seriously criticize the world’s biggest polluter?
Many of these wealthy so called leaders use and emit more personal co2 than hundreds of ordinary people and own many houses and use private jets etc as part of their glitzy lifestyle. So we should always ignore their lectures and ditto for all their ignorant elitist friends.
BTW I call them polluters because that is their term not mine.
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Simple answer; stop buying Chinese . .
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I like that until they are starving. Then what?
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Simple yes, but not easy. Decades of growing dependence on China for manufacturing, plus allowing China to steal our IP, means that only a coordinated program, across the west, of simultaneous recreation of manufacturing facilities/expertise plus a steady reduction of trade would be effective.
This would take twenty years and huge investment, going against the vested interests of many powerful billionaires in America and elsewhere.
On top of this, the price of just about everything would soar, especially now that the west has adopted suicidal green energy policies.
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Occam’s razor: Simply stop the BS and stop buying RE products.
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HOW DARE YOU USE COTTON BUDS,👹👹👹👹
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David,
Of course there are double standards for China.
It’s already a centrally-controlled, corrupt, oligarchic & hegemonistic state.
We used to call those ‘Communist states’; I wonder why?
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This is no different to how Imperial China treated the world (and its humanity) within its reach up until teh early 20th century: absolute despotic arrogance.
Communist China now hopes to do the same (IIRC they actually say so publicly), but now that the whole world is within reach, it includes all of humanity now.
The Hong Kong “refugees” allowed into Australia almost certainly contain many new “sleepers” as the CPC see Oz, with its natural resources and low population as a viable and easy target and with the US military crumbling, we have not chance. The book “Tomorrow, When the War Began” may not stay fictional fro long.
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Here’s a short 4 min 19 sec video from 3 months ago discussing the last time (apart from this one) and the previous two times this happened.
https://youtu.be/G6rPoBOtU6U
China simply doesn’t care about space pollution, uncontrolled orbital re-entry or pollution in general.
These uncontrolled re-entries are a violation of international laws.
So how do they get away with it?
The same way they get away with being the world’s largest CO2 emitter (not that it matters) while the West has to destroy itself to control “carbon” (sic) “pollution” (sic).
THEY have a vast worldwide army of ignorant, useless, Leftist idiots, including many politicians and media people, that suppress discussion and/or remain silent about these things. In their eyes, they can do nothing wrong. China is the model dictatorship they aspire to.
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The space junk should have landed on Shanghai or Peking (the old name) and made a big hole in Xi’s head. Now, that would have been good news……………….
[snip]
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I notice that the re-entry tracks illustrated seem to completely miss China. They seem happy to put the rest of the world at risk, without accepting any of that risk themselves…..
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So, not so “uncontrolled” after all….
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So maybe it dropped into empty ocean on purpose?
Good if true.
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An earlier set of reentry tracks included China. These are two predicted sets from Aerospace yesterday.
And before that:
Basically it was a random shot and the only people who knew they wouldn’t get hit were in Canada, Russia, Northern Europe, Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica. Basically anyone between 45N and 45S was in the firing line.
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NASA Condemns China as Unguided Rocket Debris Crashes to Earth
“Once again, the People’s Republic of China is taking unnecessary risks with the uncontrolled rocket stage reentry of their Long March 5B rocket stage,” Nelson said in a statement.
“They did not share specific trajectory information which is needed to predict landing zones and reduce risk, ” Nelson added.
It was the fourth time a Chinese Long March 5B rocket has spiraled aimlessly down to Earth in the last two years, sparking concerns each time the debris hits Earth.
Nelson’s statement contradicts a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, who told Bloomberg News Thursday that Chinese officials were “releasing information to the international society with an open and transparent attitude.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/nasa-condemns-china-as-unguided-rocket-debris-crashes-to-earth/ar-AA13KdDZ
China pollutes their own country with abandon.
They couldn’t give a rats about anywhere else.
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Get off it guys, this is blatant Anti-China propaganda. Any organisation moaning about this should be noted as a CIA plant.
NASA does this and always has, as does Russia. China didn’t have it crash into Australia, yet I don’t remember this level of screaming when the Yanks did exactly that. Talk about hypocritical!
Its only private entrepreneurs who are teaching Govts that they don’t need to throw taxpayers money away, go Mr Musk!
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At least with Skylab NASA got fined for littering.
Maybe the Chinese should have painted theirs green to fit the green agenda. 😅
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You’re right KP, the first thought I had was “ Skylab”. For a few weeks in 1979, the small town of Balladonia in Western Australia (population 20) was the centre of the universe. It’s where the remains of the 77 tonne Skylab crashed after missing the intended Indian Ocean. Every newspaper on the planet wrote stories about it, and in millions of households everywhere, people got their atlases out to find a place whose claim to fame so far had been that it was close to something called Cape Arid.
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Skylab is hardly the same. It was not launched four days before the crash with the intent of random destruction. It spent six years in space as a working unit, but the orbit degraded faster than expected due to increased and unexpected solar activity.
The entry was controlled, but mistimed, “In the hours before the event, ground controllers adjusted Skylab’s orientation to minimize the risk of re-entry on a populated area.[8] They aimed the station at a spot 810 miles (1,300 km) south-southeast of Cape Town, South Africa, and re-entry began at approximately 16:37 UTC, July 11, 1979.[7] The station did not burn up as fast as NASA expected. Debris landed about 300 miles (480 km) east of Perth, Western Australia due to a four-percent calculation error”
NASA informed the world of the trajectory (unlike China only 4 months ago on the last random reentry) and prepared teams to head to any country should they be needed.
NASA tried and failed with the best equipment they had at the time, but China is not even trying, and repeatedly.
PS: KP your pathetic attempts to insult and intimidate are noted.
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Sorry but I see this as pretty much a media beat-up as well, which after all makes for exciting headlines.
The risk of anything being hit is at least an order of magnitude lower than being struck by lightning.
How do you know that China is not trying in this area?
I doubt you have insider knowledge of the details of their space programs.
Pretty much all space-faring nations have had uncontrolled re-entry of rocket parts, but yes over time and with experience they should improve their competence with controlled re-entries.
The US has far more experience in this area than say the Chinese presently do but this would be a function of the number of years they have had a space program operating.
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No. Not at all. It’s a statement about the value China puts on human life. 40 years ago, with a lot less knowledge, the US put in a reasonable amount of effort to be honest, “do the right thing” and reduce the risks. China could easily have done better now, especially with another 40 years of information. The CCP does not value human life, does not value being seen to be a decent global citizen. If China were at all interested in being a good global citizen they would have asked for US help, and got it (had they not shown already that the CCP is not a good player.). The West has spent the last few decades giving IP to China. It’s only in the last ten that the West realized this was not going to be reciprocated.
And what is the dollar value of 300 flights delayed and the potential chaos this event caused which could have been avoided easily? If China is rich enough to launch space junk, it’s rich enough to do it responsibly.
Look at the CCP statement — lies and more lies.
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I am no fan of the CCP, but if we are going to talk about human life, we’re looking at around 37 million killed and lives ruined by the US in the post-WWII era through various wars – doesn’t exactly speak to a high value on human life either.
Trillions upon trillions in expenditure in this century alone.
The West no more gave China IP than entered into willing agreements to create Chinese based entities.
Whose utter foolishness is that ultimately the fault of?
And don’t get me started on the quasi pseudo-religion that is modern day environmentalism which resulted in the moving of production to China so we can pretend to be virtuous on the environmental and energy front.
But it’s OK we pollute over there instead and then can lecture the Chinese about their methods of energy expenditure involved with making the products for us!
How did the US get it’s IP for its railroads, factories etc. in the early days? Thats right – from the British.
Human ideas and know-how tend to spread regardless of if you try and control it via an overly legal IP process that seeks to control the natural order. People have been pulling things apart, figuring out how they work and copying others since man first created stone age tools!
The flight thing was as interesting as it is ridiculous, – the Spanish have never needed an excuse to take a siesta before, I’ll admit this is a more creative one.
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“PS: KP your pathetic attempts to insult and intimidate are noted”. Sadly a very Facebook like judgement. These were hardly insulting and intimidating IMHO.
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Mr. Musk is hardly a private entrepreneur. His business would not exist were it not for taxpayers’ monies in form of government subsidies and government assistance, both directly and via deliberate impediments placed upon traditional proven industries. As well as the carrots and tireless genuine “misinformation” (propaganda) campaigns to trick possibly well-meaning but either stupid or misguided people into purchasing his products. Respect to him for taking advantage of opportunities and now at least trying to hold what ought to be considered criminal organisations like Twitter to account. Shame he had to buy one to do so, but that is what the pinkos have been doing for years so maybe it is the only practical way to fight them and their demented agenda.
[Sippa, good comment. Let’s not go too far off topic at #5. -Jo]
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And with an active space program, including a space station, as well as many other attributes of an advanced country such as nuclear power stations and nuclear weapons, none of which Australia has, how do the Leftoids figure China is a Third World country and thus exempt from “carbon” (sic) “pollution” (sic) restrictions?
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They excuse China so they can continue to rationalise the anti-fossil fuel agenda in the West.
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See my comment above at 1.4.
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..and Skylab weighed 77tons when it came down! Imagine that hitting Sydney!
“But perhaps the most interesting thing about the Skylab story is that this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often. Space debris scattered across a landscape, even a sparsely populated one, is a rare event. Most de-orbiting spacecraft end up in a 5,000-km-wide stretch of the Southern Ocean called the Spaceship Cemetery (or, much less evocatively, the South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area).
That’s where Russia’s Mir space station came to rest in 2001. And as I wrote in 2015, “It’s dark here, because no sunlight penetrates water this deep. […] Temperatures hover between 2⁰ and 4⁰C. For ships used to the cold and darkness of space, it just might feel like home.””
So, the ISS gets abandoned in a few years, any bets on what will happen to that?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2020/07/12/the-summer-the-skylab-space-station-crashed-41-years-later/?sh=7c5f82231064
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KP:
Sydney drivers would take that as normal during peak hours.
And if something is coming down onto Australia have it hit Canberra.
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Imagine that landing on Dan Andrews!
POP!
(That was the champagne being opened)
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The Celestial Empire is displaying a celestial engineering.
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China doesn’t seem to care about how much space junk they randomly throw around, but the trajectory seems to miss their country, so I suppose that’s okay?
Then again who gets to clean up the mess from the real pollution from all their TOXIC solar panels and wind generators every 20 years?
Of course our future Aussie SEA sited TOXIC wind generators will probably have a much shorter life before the entire polluting mess is dumped in landfill and we start all over again.
Of course this TOXIC disaster will WASTE endless BILLIONs of $ FOREVER and will have ZERO impact on future temperature and climate.
Just look up the data from the ice core studies or the “Conversation” or The Royal Society or Petit et al etc.
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Yes, China has very likely been sloppy with their virus labs. But the USA has been completely evil with their so-called cures like Remdesivir and mRNA vaccination.
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The USA is definitely NOT an evil country, however it has been corrupted by Elite evil doers in positions of power.
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In China the economic elites are restrained by political force.
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“The USA is definitely NOT an evil country”
Lol! Korea has an internal political struggle in 1950 and America invaded, going to war with Russia. Since then, all my life, America has been at war somewhere in the world, always doing dirty work to prop up their self-assumed position as “Leader of the Free World” (and getting a free ride on their currency!)
Only those riding on the Yank’s coat tails could think they’re not evil, the other 75% of the world hate them, and a lot of the 25% under their thumb wish they weren’t.
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KP, you put up a world peace police force and finance it now.
I mean now!
No wait for you stupid,
I mean now….
Or you have nothing to say
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Isn’t that what the UN was supposed to be? Oh wait, they couldn’t do anything because the Yanks with-held their dues all the time to keep them broke.
If you look past your bias and self-interest you will find it quite hypocritical to assume the mantle of “Free World Warriors” and “we’re so much more moral than you peasants”.. Its great that WE’VE had a good standard of living from riding on America’s coat tails, but don’t pretend it hasn’t come at a cost to everyone else in the world.
Just look at any country that has planned to leave the American dollar… We’ve been on the winning side, but don’t think this hasn’t been a war. Anyway, all empires die and this will be the Asian century.
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My “self interests” are presumably exactly the same as yours. I like to eat, stay warm, not get shot or poisoned. I’m not wealthy and I’m not politically connected.
The UN was, at best, a good idea but with power brokering it’s gone bad. Maybe that was a US creation? No I don’t believe it. Probably just the opposite.
So no, the policing of the world has fallen on the backs of US taxpayers starting with wwI and undeniably with WWII.
I don’t feel “much more moral” than anyone unless they are clearly shown to be immoral
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The role of policeman in the West has traditionally been played by the Russians. It was the Russians who marched on Paris and removed Napoleon. It was the Russians who marched on Berlin and removed Hitler. One can only hope they are going to ‘march’ on Washington now, to clean up the cesspit.
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If it is the same Russians that whacked Napoleon the I hope they have some success in Washington D.C.. Unfortunately I imagine they are the same Soviets that are more modern like say Stalin? That isn’t my kind of people.
I thought Hitler “removed” himself?
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Chinese citizens now have a life expectancy of about 77 years (the USA about 79) and they now generate about 66% of their TOTAL energy from Coal. This is a massive increase since 2000.
China was very poor and was in a mess just 46 years ago when Dictator Mao died and life expectancy then was about 58 years.
But today China is definitely NOT a poor developing country and the world should expect China to act responsibly and stop threatening and interfering with other countries in their region.
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‘ … act responsibly and stop threatening and interfering with other countries in their region.’
Apart from Taiwan, everyone else is signing up to the Belt and Roa and nobody is being threatened.
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Well EG I think India, Tibet, Vietnam, Japan, Australia, Canada, the USA and certainly a number of EU countries would disagree, but who cares?
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” nobody is being threatened.”
Noooo. Australia suggests an investigation into the origin of the Wu-Flu and China
offered to helpsmacks down wine, beef, barley, lobster, cotton and coal.The last time the US has free and fair(ish) elections the people chose a leader who doesn’t start wars.
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The Communist Chinese are arrogant in the extreme and have absolute disdain for the rest of humanity even other Chinese not of the Han. The positive of this apparent negative is that arrogance eventually seals it’s own fate. That is not to say that it does not cause mayhem during it’s progress but the most arrogant people in history all met ignoble ends and they are remembered only for their evil. In recent years we have seen the demise of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Castro and eventually we will see the end of Xi. At a lower level petty despots like Trudeau, Soros and Schwab will also fade away and goodness will rule. In every case the bad ones only succeed because the good ones allow it.
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What I don’t get is that the Chinese expect us to trust their technology when they can’t get simple things right like a sprat bottle that doesn’t last more than two shots or nails that don’t bend after the first strike with a hammer.
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If this was a Long March 5B, then it’s lucky that it doesn’t contain hypergolic fluids, just kerosene and liquid oxygen – if it hasn’t boiled off.
Pretty sure it has happened both in China and the former USSR, where rockets fuelled with Hydrazine, or Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and Dinitrogen tetroxide have crashed in populated areas. these chemicals are toxic – there’s a reason that people handling this wear what amounts to spacesuits to avoid the chance of exposure.
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Wonderful news that the UK failed to pay so called poorer countries another bribe of 300 million $ to keep them quiet.
Perhaps China could help them out or even silly Biden because he really does believe the Human race is facing EXTINCTION if we don’t do SOMETHING?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/04/britain-missed-a-260-million-climate-finance-payment-deadline/
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More about the LIA conditions that the layabouts at COP 27 want us to return to ASAP.
But I must admit it would quickly reduce the Human population, so the lefty yappers would be pleased.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/11/03/scotland-in-the-little-ice-age/
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With all due respect to Jo, isn’t this article just a western media inspired anti-China beat-up? Not that they don’t deserve it, but at the time of reentry, the rocket was little more than a large, hollow, empty cylinder with very little mass compared to its volume, travelling at mach 22.
At that speed it almost certainly would have mostly all burned up in the atmosphere long before it reached the surface.
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Yes yes. Previous CCP space junk burned up too like this:
..
With all due respect, thanks. I’ve added these images to the post. Who believes the CCP?
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A piece of thin sheet metal survives a mach 22 reentry and even the paintjob is still intact. Heck, it’s not even bent!
Well, if you say so Jo, then I guess it must be true. After all, you can’t argue with photographic evidence. Not in this day and age.
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OK MV. Good point. But rocket parts are not doing Mach 22 when they are close to the ground and apparently the two photos are space junk from “a suborbital stage” of China’s launches. Not so applicable to the survival of the latest reentry, but supports my observation that China treats the world like a trash can.
Jonathon McDowell Astrophysicist at Harvard says of the top photo that “The debris …is a suborbital stage of the orbital launch, so more intact that a typical orbital debris reentry.”
As far as the latest round of junk dumping, and the survival of the 23 ton stage to sea level — here’s another potential bit from the Cote d Ivory in 2020, looking more fried because it probably was from orbital reentry:
… @planet4589
See the Newsweek story. McDowell says the timing and location suggest it might be. It was an 18 ton stage.
“For a large object like this, dense pieces like parts of the rocket engines could survive reentry and crash to Earth,” McDowell told CNN. “Once they reach the lower atmosphere they are traveling relatively slowly, so worst case is they could take out a house.” ““I conclude that the objects seen in Mahounou, and at least some of the other objects from the Cote d’Ivore region whose photos are being circulated in African media, are very likely parts of the Chinese rocket stage,” McDowell wrote on Twitter.”
Apparently seismic signals were detected too.
The second photo in my last comment is from the Philippines Space Agency, and they say it is CCP spare parts, but from “just after launch”. Hence, no blackening. Just suborbital trash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czBYy016BzU.
Commenter under the youtube says: “we have a space agency? we barely have an airforce.. lol”.
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Fair enough Jo.
As a mere mechanical engineer with 40 years’ experience, I bow to the superior authority of a CNN report.
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Hi Jo,
These photos are clearly staged photoshop jobs. Large heavy objects falling from the sky tend to leave an impact crater and metal cylinders would be destroyed on impact.
Please can you recognise that this is fake evidence and correct your article accordingly.
I am also a mechanical engineer btw. (Not that one needs to be to see this obvious hoax).
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I might have seen it in my telescope last Saturday. I observed a bright, starlike object in Aquarius, moving like a satellite but much more slowly, and flashing briefly every two seconds or so. I asked about it on my astronomy web forum and was told it was probably a discarded booster stage, tumbling slowly so that it only reflected the sun once per revolution.
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Well, with a bit of luck they will steal Musk’s systems and this will never happen again. Landing on a floating barge or landing two boosters side-by-side simultaneously is just mind-blowing.
If we designated China as a first-world country and forced it to toe the CO2 line or sanction it a la Russia, we would all starve, as mentioned above. If China charged what Australia would have to for local manufacture, we wouldn’t be able to afford tractors, or utes, or trucks, and still afford food as well.
Having them as the world’s manufactory has been a tremendous boon to our standard of living for thirty years.
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I must have been mistaken about the tractors manufactured in India and utes in Thailand.
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That’s because China doesn’t care and never has. It considers its people expendable, it has no honor, and will do whatever it takes — exploitation, fraud, you name it — to “win”.
They. do. not. care.
And they want to continue their ascendency to the #1 power in the world? All I can say is that I hope the rest of the world recognizes what a nightmare that would be.
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Remember bits of SpaceX hit in Vic mountains recently.
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How many tons of Skylab crashed onto Western Australia in 1979? ‘Good citizen’ USA were issued a 400 dollar littering fine by the Esperance shire council; did they ever pay?
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No damage?
No impact crater?
Jo, clearly you can see that this is fake?
https://joannenova.com.au/wp-content/ccp-longmarch-debris-1.jpg
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I assumed that they propped it up in a convenient location for the photo. Otherwise it is absurd.
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that assumption in itself is absurd. Why stage evidence when you have it to begin with?
seriously, this photo is reminiscent of a serene japanese rock garden.
It is exactly the opposite of what you would expect from a rocket weighing hundreds of kg smashing into earth at terminal velocity.
But hey, we live in a post-science world, so anything is possible as long as you have a photo on twitter.
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It is not absurd given that its the sort of thing they have done in the past.
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