[HN Gopher] CZ5B (Chinese rocket) Reentry Prediction
___________________________________________________________________
CZ5B (Chinese rocket) Reentry Prediction
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 82 points
Date : 2022-07-30 12:46 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aerospace.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (aerospace.org)
| throwaway4good wrote:
| It appears to have landed somewhere in the Indian ocean.
| r721 wrote:
| US: "113E 3N"
|
| https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1553438866203443207
|
| China: "119.0E 9.1N"
|
| https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1553444872237027329
| publicola1990 wrote:
| There seems a video going the rounds on twitter of its trails
| over the night sky somewhere in Malaysia[1].
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1553425522369118208?cxt=HHw...
| r721 wrote:
| Thread: https://twitter.com/DELTA_V/status/1553426891285139457
| r721 wrote:
| Their twitter account to watch for updates:
| https://twitter.com/AerospaceCorp
| pid_0 wrote:
| JayGuerette wrote:
| 1. Disguise payload as space junk 2. Design to "fall" on
| populated area 3. Say "oops" 4. ...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| What payload would possibly be worth this, that wouldn't be
| more effectively served by a different delivery mechanism?
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| a plausibly deniable payload purpose
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| I don't think China cares. At all.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| But in this case there are plenty of other, better
| delivery mechanisms than disguising the payload as space
| junk.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Any 'useful' payload would erase any plausible deniability.
| If the idea is to merely drop a piece of scrap metal on
| some politicians house or something, with no warhead
| involved, I don't think they can do that. Reentry is too
| chaotic for a piece of unguided rocket debris to hit a
| target that exactly.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| How is "Chinese space junk falls on important target"
| plausibly deniable? Especially compared to alternatives
| that conceal source?
|
| It sounds good, but I'm struggling to think of a use case
| for (1) an important enough target to be impactful, (2)
| that could be effected by space debris, (3) for which
| there's a distinction between "we accidentally hit it" vs
| "we deliberately hit it"
| raverbashing wrote:
| You're forgetting about what happens when something "falls"
| from the atmosphere uncontrolled
| iNate2000 wrote:
| But what if it only _appears_ uncontrolled?
| raverbashing wrote:
| People who know how to track this stuff knows if it's
| uncontrolled or not
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Make it land on a valuable target and not make it looks
| suspicious?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I still remember when Skylab fell to Earth in 1979. I was 9.
| People on TV who found items (and others who claimed they did by
| manufacturing junk with aluminum foil). It was inspirational. We
| looked to the sky at the right time to see what we could see. I
| wish I could share that with my kid, but he's away this weekend.
| seventytwo wrote:
| Am I reading this correctly that this is gonna fall over lots of
| populated areas?
| tgv wrote:
| If I interpret it properly, most of the path is over the ocean.
| Debris might still hit Indonesia though.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| China is known for dropping rocket boosters on their own towns
| fairly regularly. For instance:
| https://twitter.com/ChinaSpaceNews/status/637174369677123584
|
| With China situated where it is, this sort of thing is hard for
| them to avoid. Probably they want to eventually switch to fully
| reusable rockets, but that's a touch nut to crack.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > With China situated where it is, this sort of thing is hard
| for them to avoid.
|
| Sea launch or contract launch sites are good ways to avoid
| it.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something, but China has an enormous east-
| facing coastline. Why not launch from Hainan over the
| Pacific? It's basically Florida but better-situated.
| Jabbles wrote:
| You'd have to build the rocket on the island, or transport
| the rocket to the island for launch. Neither is impossible,
| but it's a lot easier to build and launch from the
| mainland.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I mean sure, you could use the southern tip of Guangdong
| instead. I just don't see a technical advantage* to
| launching inland.
|
| * of course I see a military advantage where foreign
| countries can't recover your technology on failed
| launches...
| tjpnz wrote:
| If they launched from Hainan there would also be benefits
| in terms of Earth's higher rotational speed. Some of the
| weight saved on fuel could go towards additional payload
| capacity.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| mlindner wrote:
| The curve shown is the entire uncertainty bar on the location.
| It's +/- 1 hour of the center.
| tgv wrote:
| That's a pretty sad state of affairs. For what, prestige?
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Necessity.
|
| China is banned from international space cooperation. They
| _have_ to master space technology themselves because they can
| 't rely on others. In order to do that, risks must be taken and
| sacrifices are necessary.
|
| On a broader level, the Chinese think they made a mistake in
| not investing in science and technology for so long (read: the
| past couple hundred years). They see lack of science and
| technology as one of the main reasons why the were so miserable
| the past 150 years (minus the past 40 years or so). So they're
| not going to make that mistake again.
|
| It's perhaps the "sacrifices are necessary" point that western
| commentators most disagree with. After all it goes against the
| idea of individual freedom. But China is very much a country
| that prioritizes collective interests over individual
| interests. This isn't even a weird thing on the world stage:
| most Asian countries have a similar mindset.
| mlindner wrote:
| This is wrong on numerous points.
|
| > China is banned from international space cooperation.
|
| Firstly, China is not banned from international space
| cooperation. They have worked with several other agencies
| including ESA and Roscosmos. The only ban that exists is the
| US restricting China from working with it because of a
| history of their seizing and stealing of US civil space
| technology for military purposes.
|
| > In order to do that, risks must be taken and sacrifices are
| necessary.
|
| You can take risks and sacrifices without endangering the
| general public of your own country and especially without
| endangering the public of the world. China has the technology
| to de-orbit vehicles, they just refuse to implement it on
| some vehicles.
|
| > They see lack of science and technology as one of the main
| reasons why the were so miserable the past 150 years (minus
| the past 40 years or so).
|
| This is the myth of "chinese national humiliation" that is a
| common talking point of Chinese nationalists and is used to
| foment nationalist sentiment. Repeating it doesn't make it
| real.
|
| > But China is very much a country that prioritizes
| collective interests over individual interests.
|
| You can do that (with criticism) and endanger the population
| of your own country but you can't at all do that
| internationally. That's a ridiculous claim.
|
| > This isn't even a weird thing on the world stage: most
| Asian countries have a similar mindset.
|
| This is again completely false. Japan values the life of an
| individual at even higher levels than we do in the US. It's
| not an Asian sentiment. It's a Chinese Communist Party
| sentiment. (BTW this technique of expanding their own values
| to all of Asia is something that Imperial Japan did heavily
| in the decades lead up to WW2. Let's hope China doesn't head
| along a similiar route.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-
| Prosperit...)
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| > This is the myth of "chinese national humiliation" that
| is a common talking point of Chinese nationalists and is
| used to foment nationalist sentiment. Repeating it doesn't
| make it real.
|
| The idea has existed way before the CCP was formed. See the
| May 4th movement. Just because you don't want to
| acknowledge it doesn't mean it's fake.
|
| Calling someone a "nationalist" just because you don't like
| the point, neither automatically makes that person a
| nationalist, nor does it invalidate the point.
|
| It's also interesting how people say "never forget" w.r.t.
| WW2 atrocities, but when it comes to atrocities done
| against China it quickly becomes "get over it".
|
| > you can't at all do that internationally.
|
| Not disagreeing with you. But please tell me why Starlink
| has uncontrolled reentry, and why there's not a similar
| amount of outrage against that.
| https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1551434933285052416
|
| > Japan values the life of an individual at even higher
| levels than we do in the US.
|
| You mean Japanese aren't known to do things that they don't
| like at an individual level, but still do because they feel
| compelled to for the benefit of the group? What do you
| think the phenomenon of not being able to turn down a boss
| invitation to group drinking exactly is? Why do you think
| Japanese has fewer problems with masks?
|
| > BTW this technique of expanding their own values to all
| of Asia
|
| Woah, now where does _this_ accusation come from? Do you
| have any sources backing up your claim that this is what
| they 're doing?
| mlindner wrote:
| > It's also interesting how people say "never forget"
| w.r.t. WW2 atrocities, but when it comes to atrocities
| done against China it quickly becomes "get over it".
|
| I don't say that personally, but you're completely
| misinterpreting the meaning of that. It's about making
| sure that any one (any country) doesn't repeat the
| atrocities done by specific countries in WW2. China's
| version of never forget is about a twisted sense of
| revenge about what was done to it, not about messaging to
| its own people to never repeat the things that were done
| to it. (In fact many in China seems to take the opinion
| that if something was done to China then it's okay for
| China to do it to others, which is completely opposite of
| the messaging you're comparing it to.)
|
| > But please tell me why Starlink has uncontrolled
| reentry, and why there's not a similar amount of outrage
| against that.
|
| Because Starlink is explicitly designed to be 100%
| demisable (burn up) in the atmosphere so it cannot harm
| anyone on the ground. Indeed despite there has been about
| 100 re-entries of Starlink satellites, and no debris have
| been found. That's why people don't complain about it to
| the same level. (Plenty of people still complain or
| invent reasons to complain, like that it's creating too
| much aluminum in the atmosphere, so it's not without it's
| complaints.) SpaceX has indeed had debris de-orbit and
| hit the ground, other than Starlink, and people have
| complained about that. They were also MUCH smaller than
| the Chinese stages however. You have to remember that
| these are some of the biggest single objects re-entering
| in human history. There have been only 3 objects that
| have been heavier to re-enter in an uncontrolled fashion.
| The bigger and heavier they are, the more debris are
| likely to survive to hit people or objects on the ground.
|
| > You mean Japanese aren't known to do things that they
| don't like at an individual level, but still do because
| they feel compelled to for the benefit of the group? What
| do you think the phenomenon of not being able to turn
| down a boss invitation to group drinking exactly is? Why
| do you think Japanese has fewer problems with masks?
|
| I explicitly was talking about the value that Japan
| places on an individual's life versus other countries.
| For example, to what extant a culture is willing to
| sacrifice an individual's life for the benefit of the
| greater good.
|
| > Woah, now where does this accusation come from? Do you
| have any sources backing up your claim that this is what
| they're doing?
|
| You were just doing it. You were extrapolating CCP values
| to all of Asia. That's why I mentioned it in ( ) as a
| side comment.
| mlindner wrote:
| One further note. Here's a list of the largest
| uncontrolled re-entries.
| https://planet4589.org/space/articles/big_reentries.txt
|
| Look at the dates on them, other than the Chinese stages.
| bryananderson wrote:
| I can't emphasize enough how not necessary it is to have the
| upper stage of CZ-5B reenter uncontrolled. Nudging the stage
| into the atmosphere while over an ocean is a much easier
| problem than launching the rocket on a precise trajectory to
| rendezvous with a space station. China clearly has the
| capability; not doing it is a choice.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| So why isn't Starlink doing it?
| https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1551434933285052416
|
| And why isn't there a similar amount of outrage against
| Starlink? Genuine question.
| sam_bristow wrote:
| I believe Starlink satellites are small enough that
| they'd burn up completely in the atmosphere before
| crashing into anything.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| Science and prestige probably.
|
| Don't forget that China is still catching up. In the 80s, when
| it started developing, China was poorer than any African
| country.
|
| The Soviets and Americans also did a lot of borderline and
| dangerous stuff when doing prestige and science.
|
| Times changes here in the WeSt where safety is first. It will
| also be in China one day, too.
| tjpnz wrote:
| The US program wasn't known for dropping boosters onto
| villages and dousing residents with hypergolic propellants in
| the process. While the US program did take a lot of risks
| early on it would be incorrect to suggest any equivalence in
| attitudes towards risk management.
| roenxi wrote:
| Was that because they didn't do it or because reporting
| wasn't very effective in those days? Developing rockets
| isn't easy, things explode in unexpected ways and as the
| article points out it can be quite hard to control where a
| thing lands.
|
| The US is not known for their safety culture, they screw up
| just as readily as everyone else. They are very well known
| for minimising its own flaws an throwing a spotlight on its
| opponents mis-steps. The US inherited the fine British
| tradition of effective propaganda and do a very good job
| deploying it (comes with the territory for democracies,
| really).
|
| Seriously, "they didn't do X..." for a country the size of
| the US over the length of years we're discussing is
| meaningless. Proving a negative like that is not practical
| even in casual conversation.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _The US is not known for their safety culture_
|
| SUBSAFE?
| basementcat wrote:
| This was instituted after the loss of the entire crew of
| the USS Thresher.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Yes, in 1963. And along with the USS Scorpion (SSN-589)
| in 1968 are the only two US Navy nuclear submarine
| sinkings.
|
| Someone can convert that to 9's based on fleet deployment
| time, but that seems like an exemplary 60 year safety
| record.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_su
| bma...
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| > The US program wasn't known for dropping boosters onto
| villages and dousing residents with hypergolic propellants
| in the process. While the US program did take a lot of
| risks early on it would be incorrect to suggest any
| equivalence in attitudes towards risk management.
|
| It would be correct to suggest equivalence of attitudes
| while we were nuking Navy sailors and Nevada hundreds of
| times, to say nothing of willfully infecting citizens with
| syphilis, etc, etc, etc.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| What's your argument? That we shouldn't strive to be
| better today, because horrible things happened in the
| past? I guess it is also OK for china to genocide the
| Uyghurs, since the Holocaust happened.
| andrepd wrote:
| No, because the Nazis are universally reviled. A more apt
| comparison would be the countless foreign invasions and
| "regime changes" done by the US, which resulted in
| millions of direct deaths and god knows how much indirect
| damage, since that is something that is not universally
| reviled at all.
| steve76 wrote:
| mlindner wrote:
| Events of over half a century ago bear little relevance
| to events happening today, right now. You can't use the
| past to justify the present and the future.
| andrepd wrote:
| Half a century is a bat of an eye in the grand scheme of
| things.
| lttlrck wrote:
| So how far back _are_ we allowed to go hunting for
| justifications?
| tjpnz wrote:
| I'm talking about NASA, not the US Navy.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Kinda not correct to compare the space program which
| isn't the nuclear weapons program. If you compare the US
| space program to the Chinese Program, there no
| equivalence. If you compare the US nuclear weapons
| program to the Chinese weapons program, you might
| something more comparable, but China had some pretty wild
| and reckless testing. Probably won't surprise many that
| many test occurs in Xinjiang and affected the Uyghur
| population.
|
| https://www.ctbto.org/specials/testing-
| times/16-october-1964...
| steve76 wrote:
| serf wrote:
| >The Soviets and Americans also did a lot of borderline and
| dangerous stuff when doing prestige and science.
|
| the difference being that the cold war fueled novel R&D and
| science that the world had never seen; the Long March is a
| tool that was created as a means to chase after the
| capabilities of similar Heavy-Lift style rockets. The
| experimentation of the Cold War was fairly tightly controlled
| and limited in quantity; the Long March is supposed to be
| used for generally all space construction for the foreseeable
| future.
|
| Given that this class of tool exists in the world already,
| all we can be asked to do is judge it against its' peers.
| They all have had accidents, but if the Long March is going
| to be known for spraying debris across the planet then this
| is a problem that everyone must pay attention to, regardless
| of where China has progressed to with regards to their safety
| culture.
|
| We're not talking about Chinese safety when we're referring
| to space debris; this encapsulates the entire world.
| hospadar wrote:
| > The experimentation of the Cold War was fairly tightly
| controlled and limited in quantity;
|
| This seems a bit generous to the US & USSR - remember when
| we nuked the bikini atoll many times? (oops sorry about
| your homeland)
| foobiekr wrote:
| The first person down a path, unfortunately, tramples a
| lot.
|
| It takes serious internal problems for the third or
| fourth person following to repeat those mistakes.
| waffleiron wrote:
| It's not like the US made all data from their tests
| public, your argument would hold up if they would have.
| [deleted]
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Not just Bikini Atoll; America nuked _itself_ hundreds of
| times too, injuring and killing perhaps tens of
| thousands, maybe more:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders
|
| John Wayne is possibly one of the victims of this
| (inconclusive; besides getting nuked he also smoked like
| a chimney.)
| Linda703 wrote:
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _In May 2020, two villages in Ivory Coast were hit by objects -
| including a 12-metre section of pipe - that appeared to have come
| from a Chinese Long March 5B expected to land that day_
|
| > _[Dr Shane] Walsh [International Centre for Radio Astronomy
| Research: ]<<They claim to have learned from the last two
| launches and added some method of control, but the EU tracking
| network showed this unit is tumbling, which means it's not
| controlled>>_
|
| > _The US and the EU have embedded risk assessments and will not
| launch if there is a greater than one in 10,000 chance of causing
| injury. China appears to have a much lower bar_
|
| (From The Guardian:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/29/as-more-space-... )
|
| Some would have though from at least last episode in May 2021
| that it finally appeared as clear that fatalist and jus-formalist
| orientations and behaviours are largely frowned upon.
| troyvit wrote:
| There are no consequences beyond being frowned upon it looks
| like. One of the perks of being a super power I guess?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _perks of being a super power_
|
| China is a regional power vying for superpower status. To
| memory, nobody has ever been punished for fucking up launch
| and recovery. (EDIT: I stand corrected!)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _To memory, nobody has ever been punished for fucking up
| launch and recovery._
|
| Canada once fined the Soviet Union six million dollars for
| crashing a satellite containing a nuclear reactor into
| northern Canada. The Soviets paid out three million.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954
| 77pt77 wrote:
| I'm completely surprised they paid anything, let alone
| half!
| ethbr0 wrote:
| To be fair, that instance was a crash of 50 kg of U-235,
| if which only 0.5 kg was recovered.
|
| Apparently the controlling international instrument is
| the Space Liability Convention (1972) [0].
|
| Ratified by the US, Russia, China, India, Europe, et al.
|
| The only catch is you have to get your government to
| initiate a claim against the responsible government. E.g.
| Ivory Coast bringing a claim against China.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Conve
| ntion
| yorwba wrote:
| > The US and the EU have embedded risk assessments and will not
| launch if there is a greater than one in 10,000 chance of
| causing injury.
|
| This may seem like a strict requirement, but the surface of the
| Earth is quite big (510 trillion square meters) compared to how
| many people there are (7.79 billion), so only about one in
| 65,000 square meters even has a human on it.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| It is going to land in the water.
|
| The Chinese know what they are doing.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Yes they know what they're doing, but what they're doing is
| taking calculated risks. They don't know it's going to land in
| the water, and their rocket boosters often don't. They
| understand this risk, and accept it.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Are you saying they're able to control it somehow?
| throwaway4good wrote:
| I am saying they know more about how this thing will fall and
| desolve than journalists or US defense organisations that
| have interest in drumming up fear either as a way to get
| attention or in a broder anti-China effort.
|
| We will see in a couple of hours.
| detritus wrote:
| Irrespective of whether the US administration wants to
| 'drum up fear', are you suggesting that China has a better
| ability to track orbiting objects than the likes of Norad
| (never mind the global mass of space enthusiasts adding-to
| and finessing datapoints)?
| mlindner wrote:
| No they do not know how it will fall. That's beyond the
| ability of current known science of any country, let alone
| China.
|
| The last time they did this, they put out a fake
| "prediction" of where it would fall immediately after it
| impacted to try to pretend to people that they knew exactly
| where it would fall.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| _Nobody_ knows what they 're doing to the degree of keeping
| people perfectly safe. Too many variables in how this thing
| will interact with the atmosphere on re-entry.
| mlindner wrote:
| Indeed. The stage is wildly tumbling through the edges of the
| atmosphere and the atmosphere is not continuous but "lumpy"
| with areas of higher and lower drag.
| pid_0 wrote:
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| 70% chance. I'll take those odds.
| mlindner wrote:
| The Chinese don't have any control over this stage. It's
| tumbling in space (as seen by several observers). They know
| they're leaving debris in space, but they have no idea where it
| will land. They continue to lie to their own public and the
| international public on every launch that the vehicle is
| controlled.
| throwawayfck wrote:
| [deleted]
| ronyclau wrote:
| There is a documentary named "Falling from the Sky"[1] from 2009,
| which depicts how scared and helpless people in a Hunan village
| were, every time a rocket wss launched from Xichang Satellite
| Launch Center. The village was located within the area where
| rocket debris would fall, and the villagers were basically told
| to suck it up by officials.
|
| [1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2136916/
| r721 wrote:
| See also this NYT piece with a lot of photos:
|
| >Remote Russians Recycle Rocket Wreckage
|
| >Space junk from rockets launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome
| in Russia ends up in the remote Mezensky District, where
| residents repurpose it for hunting sleds, tools and boats.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/lens/space-rocket-parts-r...
| blinding-streak wrote:
| That is a fantastic alliteration.
| wil421 wrote:
| Thanks for the new word I just learned.
|
| Definition of alliteration : the repetition of usually
| initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words
| or syllables (such as wild and woolly, threatening throngs)
| -- called also head rhyme, initial rhyme
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| We had to learn _alliteration_ in seventh grade US
| English class, where we were told in no uncertain terms
| that we would fail the class if we didn 't master it with
| examples.
|
| Another word in this category was _assonance_ which as
| seventh graders we found quite useful for various
| purposes during instructional hiatus.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Guy is pleased he learned something new today, what you
| replied sounds a lot like a put-down. Just a few minutes
| ago I learnt of the satanic sounding Cacodyl Cyanide but
| i'm sure a ton of chemists are very familiar with it.
| Learn and let learn.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| Welcome!
| throwaway4good wrote:
| In the 90es China used to send up satellites for US companies;
| cheap and cheerful until a major accident happened:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708
|
| And after the accident; the Chinese fixed their rockets and the
| Americans started their boycot; including banning them from the
| ISS leading to the space station program the CZ5B is a part of.
|
| Today the Chinese space program is a source of national pride
| and is cherred and followed as the US space program was in its
| heyday.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I can't really help not feeling bad for them. I think the
| Chinese people need a reality check. Hopefully this kind of
| movie will spread awareness. The people that should feel bad
| are those supporting the regime.
|
| The CCP exists because the Chinese let it exist. If they want
| to have a fair society they'll have to overthrow it sooner or
| later. We can't do it for them. There is no other way. Even
| sanctions hurt the people more than the regime (see North
| Korea). People are nothing but livestock to them. Hopefully
| these examples will help teach the population to see what they
| really are. The people 'displaced' by the Olympics are another
| example.
|
| It seems pretty popular still, but cracks seem to be forming
| after the heavy-handed Corona measures in Shanghai. I'm hoping
| it will sow the seeds of discontent and eventually a revolution
| will happen. Or a gradual move to democracy perhaps. But the
| tighter controlled a dictatorship is, the lower the chance of
| that.
|
| Maybe I'm too optimistic but I think that dictatorships will
| always fall eventually. Even strict ones like China and North
| Korea.
| aaron695 wrote:
| Very cool space junk was found in Australia this week, it's like
| it's out of a movie -
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-29/space-junk-found-in-n...
|
| It'd be cool to get close to where this stuff goes down, but it's
| impossible. Just good luck.
|
| I think seeing the ISS come down in the pacific in 2031 would be
| cool. Hopefully NASA will help rather than hinder this.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Probably best not to get _too_ close unless you know exactly
| what it is. Hydrazine is very toxic and probably carcinogenic.
| It would be cool to watch a reentry like that, but I don 't
| think I'd get as close to the debris as that guy is.
| 13of40 wrote:
| It looks like it might be made of carbon fiber as well, which
| tends to burrow into bare skin when you touch it. I
| definitely wouldn't take a selfie with my hand resting on it
| like that guy.
|
| I'm not sure they still do it, but Soyuz(?) used to have a
| radiation source on the bottom to use as a kind of altitude
| detector, so if one of those broke up there could be another
| surprise for someone who found debris.
| peteradio wrote:
| That video is incredible. "It's kinda incredible really having
| this piece of space junk fallin in me uhhh ... paddy. You know
| think of what else is out there in uhh other people's paddies.
| _inaudible above my children 's weird minecraft videos_ Yeh? I
| suppose you wouldn't fare too well if a piece landed on yuh"
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Imagine the coverage of this had that thing been Chinese.
| mlindner wrote:
| It would have been marginally increased compared to what it
| got, however this thing is not a 20+ ton object like the
| Chinese stage. It's a few hundred kg. The western press
| hasn't cared about other re-entering Chinese stages until
| they start lofting entire main stages into orbit much larger
| than almost anything in history to re-enter. (The only things
| larger to re-enter uncontrolled were full space stations,
| which has only occurred a couple times in history.)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-30 23:02 UTC)