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Comment by Simon_O_Rourke | Hacker News Reader

This is deeply irresponsible by the CSNA and is a disaster just waiting to happen on the ground. Is it laziness on the part of their flight team or just crass disregard for others safety?

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I'd chock it up under crass disregard for others safety. They drop boosters on their own people and don't care: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping...

>China's defiance of this norm has resulted in some horrific scenes as its boosters have periodically crashed into villages.

And possibly a fairing half dropped onto a populated area from a different launch yesterday:

https://twitter.com/cnspaceflight/status/1589289240776839168

"It's fine, we did tell everyone to evacuate" - I wonder how many actually evacuate / can afford to evacuate every time.

It's economically hardnosed of them. It's on average cheaper to just take the chance and pay off damages if someone is injured or killed. Remember, the highest chance of fatality will be in densely populated lower latitude countries where the monetary cost of killing someone is lower.

The won’t even pay for any damages. They would never allow one of these to reenter over US airspace or other large, powerful countries. But if it falls in the middle of some small country, tough luck getting paid for damages.

They are signatory to a treaty that requires them to pay for damages. And they had no control over where this booster came down (except that it would come down between 41S/41N, roughly), so your "they would never allow" is incorrect.

China signed the Outer Space Treaty. Your rocket your damage your bill.

But how is anyone going to collect on the bill, if China doesn't want to pay?

Just quickly and quietly paying is likely cheaper than the international incident, the "China refuses to comply with treaty" headlines, and likely resulting souring of international relations.

Two thirds of the planet is water. Most land is uninhabited. Population and property is concentrated in cities. The chance of debris hitting you is less than a lightning strike.

There is a difference between the chance of debris hitting a person and the chance of it hitting any person.

Regardless of the probability, there is a problem with choosing that risk for someone else without their consent.

> Regardless of the probability, there is a problem with choosing that risk for someone else without their consent.

Every action we take imposes risks on other people.

Economic models are one of our best tools to use in weighing these risks against each other and the costs of mitigating them.

(OTOH: China's cost to mitigate most of these risks would be, generally, pretty small... It's a cost of being in the space game, IMO.)

There is an enormous gulf between most kinds of harm one can do to someone in a different country on the other side of the world and dropping part of a rocket on them.

Nobody agrees a priori to China’s assessment of their economic value.

Even if you take the US assessment of the value of a person's life it probably doesn't make sense for China to do anything to control the entry of these stages.

It's simple if you use the Foreign Death Conversion Chart.

I agree. I’m all for China achieving things but this seems really inconsiderate and irresponsible. Dropping debris on populations is unacceptable as nearly happened over the last few years according to this story. Clashes with their environmental stance and desire to be responsible global power. Why?

I can't answer your question but be aware that you are looking through a very western lens, and probably US-centric lens particularly, and other cultures can see things in very different way, starting with assumptions (or simply unthought practices) that you have nothing to compare with.

This is China in a nutshell. They don't give a fuck about what's happening around them. Unless it Harms their economic interest. Other than that they do not have any compassion for safety, environment etc. It might change in the future, but with this crazy regime I doubt people ever gonna care about it.

Let's not make generalizations about a country of 1b+ people based on one aspect of their space program. You could easily draw an equally unflattering image of the US or any other nation if you're willing to extrapolate from a single datapoint like that.

charitable interpretation: “china” = “chinese government“ in the statement you are responding to.

I try to use the latter form myself when talking about nation state actions to aid people who have trouble translating from one to the other, but it doesn’t seem that hard to figure out in this case. otoh e.g. “the chinese value education highly” is a bit more ambiguous since the statement is true for both the chinese people and the chinese goverment

This interpretation is a little better, but I think my objections still apply.

There are plenty of other data points that line up with this one though.

Yes

It is a calculated risk; perhaps similar to what have been done by the US and Russia when their space ambitions were at their highest.

Ah, the good old “whatabout the US did it 50 years ago therefore we can do it today”. Also used to justify all sorts of atrocities, imperialism, IP theft, etc.

I also think there is a somewhat hyperbolic anti-China sentiment in the commentary on all of this. Plus a perhaps frustration at the US Space authorities on the lack of communication from their Chinese counterpart, something of course they themselves are entirely to blame for.

Anyway; the Chinese have done a few of these "uncontrolled reentries" now. All crashing into the ocean; so they are either very lucky or it is not so uncontrolled after all.

Neither. There just isn't that big a fraction of the earth's surface that's inhabited. You should regard this similarly to someone firing a gun into the air.

If you fired a gun into the air in the UK I'm pretty sure that a) You'd get in pretty serious trouble for it by itself and b) if you killed or injured someone that trouble would be significantly multiplied to the extent you'd end up in prison. I think it would be a manslaughter charge.

In most areas of the US recklessly discharging a firearm into the air would also get you in serious trouble (even in rural areas) along with a (lesser) murder charge if you killed someone.

FWIW, according to a study published by the National Library of Medicine, "celebratory gunfire" accounts for 4.6% of all stray bullet-related deaths and injuries:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22743389/

Right. Just as with the space debris, it should be illegal and prosecuted but it's quite unlikely to actually kill someone when only performed a few times. It's the habit you have to prevent.

Chances of not hitting land after n completely random reentriees is (71%)^n. That drops fairly fast.

You’re down into single digit percentage by the time n hits 7 in that case. What are we at, 4th re-entry? So 25% chance it lands in water given your formula. Given Chinese superstitions around the number 4, let’s hope this one has a safe and wet splashdown.

That’s not how the stats work. There’s a 71% chance it lands in water this time (and every time). If you flip heads 3 times in a row, it doesn’t mean you’re more likely to flip tails next time.

My understanding is that this is more of the equivalent of making sure you land on heads all 3 times. In that case it’s a 1/8th on 3 coin flips, no?

> My understanding is that this is more of the equivalent of making sure you land on heads all 3 times

Yep!

That's a five year-olds uninformed take because you assume it could land anywhere on earth, hence 71% water....

Orbital mechanics does not work that way (except for a polar orbit). It's covering a particular band of the surface that it could land on if uncontrolled.

Reports suggest that they require only 3 launches in this configuration LM5B where the core stage falls back, for the construction of their station. They might have made the assumption that chances of damage due to debris is very low considering that only 3 launches are to happen with this configuration.

In case even if there is damage on the ground, there are treaties that govern the liabilities in case.

It would be interesting to know why they technically chose this particular way of doing it, but the discussion seems too hyperbolic for that.

Now that the design has been proved out, they're not going to stop doing it.

> In case even if there is damage on the ground, there are treaties that govern the liabilities in case.

If it fell on your house with you sleeping inside I'm sure the liabilities treaties would make your family be totally ok with it.

When governments, including your own make these kinds of decisions they do not give a flying fuck about your particular family. They only car if it will cost them election, loosing giant lawsuit etc.

Kind of wonder how it'd go, if the rocket accidentally took out the head of a mafia family or some equally dangerous group. ;)

Regardless of the sentiments of the criticism, the fact is it’s irresponsible on the China part. You seem to downplay that fact. If you want to be balanced that’s the first thing you’d need to acknowledge. And no, it is uncontrolled. No questions about it.

No matter how small the risk, countries have to make plan, allocate resources, keeping track of the rocket’s path, in case it does happen. They can’t just pray. Spain briefly closed part of their airspace, delaying 300 flights. Who is responsible for that?

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/spain-briefly-clos...

Is there anything wrong with being anti PRC?

PRC != China or Chinese

One of them hit Côte d’Ivoire.

Do you have a link to an official investigation/report on this?

I don’t have a primary source handy but there’s tons of news reports. The Côte d’Ivoire crash was in May 2020.

I’ve looked at the news reports and as far as I’ve seen they only reference social media posts which seem to be inconclusive.

That is just a bold faced lie that 2 seconds of googling would prove you wrong.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping...

https://www.newsweek.com/photos-show-rocket-debris-india-chi...

Anyway; I don’t know if you are an Astro turfing troll or just that brainwashed.

I think pulling the whataboutism card may have worked in the past, but today people realize it's just a really bad defense for when you have nothing sensible to reply with, after facts, inconvenient truths, and plain hypocrisy has been pointed out.

It's simply not the ace up the sleeve people think it is.

As if two wrongs somehow make it right!

Uncontrolled re-entry of any debris likely to reach the ground without burning up is a bad idea. So is blowing anything up in orbit (creating huge hazards for other spacecraft).

These are bad ideas no matter who does them and the fact that anyone did so in the past is not an excuse for continuing the bad behavior.

>"the US did it 50 years ago therefore we can do it today"

The US / or other countries for that matter "did it XXX years ago" to advance their goals and get more prosperous at the expense of the others. If you want to punish countries for doing similar things now it is totally ok, as long as you punish the same crimes committed earlier. The crime must be paid for. This of course will never happen so when you are trying to tell other countries that they should not be doing things that you've done yourself and got away with the only reasonable answer you can expect is fuck you very much.

If you punish every country retroactively for crimes committed ages ago, every country would cease to exist. There is no country without blood on its hands, historically. This is like saying that you should go to jail because your grandfather jaywalked 80 years ago, which was not a crime back then but is now.

Starting with the people who are still alive would be a good idea. I think you can find plenty of people responsible for modern wars/other crimes against humanity after WWII. The end of WWII also marks the "official" punishment as in Nuremberg trials.

This is not "your grandfather jaywalked" case but pretty rational I think. But you know where it will end up when for example our "leader" the US had declared that it does not recognize ICC, and will take any measures starting with sanctions and including force if it ever gets prosecuted. The other countries take it as an example. Cant blame them for not buying into that do as I say bullshit.

Maybe; but the optics are terrible.

It was wrong then and is wrong now.

You really should learn more about the history of the US program before making such ill informed statements.

The US and Russia didn't do this. Both space programs either used upper stages to boost into orbit or were small enough to burn up on reentry. The Long March 5B has a giant rocket 20 metric ton that is too big to burn up and falls to Earth in an uncontrolled fashion.

I was referring to them taking calculated risks; not doing exactly the same thing.

Dumping 20 tons of metal from orbit isn't a "calculated risk" its sloppy and dangerous. They could have built the rocket using 50 years of experience knowing this could be an issue, instead they just lie and say it will burn up. They already dropped one on a village.

> They already dropped one on a village.

That sounds pretty serious. Was there any official investigation or just ambiguous pictures posted on social media?

It happened in May of 2020. The debris landed in Côte d'Ivoire and the debris was spotted in it’s way down by a local infrasound station. The debris was tracked in the atmosphere by multiple governments and there are photos. Google it for yourself.

I tried Googling for an official report or investigation but I couldn’t find one. Do you know if any of these multiple governments issued one?

Astro physicist Johnathan McDowell[1] was tracking it. I doubt the Cotes d'Ivoire did an official investigation due to their general lack of funds, and China denies that the Long March can even reenter the atmosphere so they didn't go check it out. Here's another story that references local reports[2]. An article from Ars quoting the US Space Force confirming entry over the Atlantic headed toward Cotes d'Ivoire[3].

What more do you want?

[1] https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1260222397350887425

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21256484/china-rocket-deb...

[3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/large-chunks-of-a-ch...

Just anything more conclusive than social media posts. An actual investigation into these reports and purported debris fragments.

According to Wikipedia, Cotes d'Ivoire is one of the largest economies in West Africa, representing 40% of the total GDP of the Economic Community of West African States.

There are numerous scientists and government agencies on the record making official press releases claiming to have tracked the rocket debris to an area of Cotes d'Ivoire. There are photos in Cotes d'Ivoire of wreckage consistent with the rocket. Why do you need an "official investigation"? Who would you trust to do that? Why are you taking the word of the Chinese government?

The Verge article links to a 'local news site' afriksoir.net that looks really shady, similar to clickbait spam sites.

Registered on April 9th, 2019 with GoDaddy according to WHOIS.

It's top story today is just commenting on some Ivorian politican's Twitter feed https://afriksoir.net/lobognon-junte-goita-integrite-mali-jo...

And it's not linked to any established West African news organization.

This took me about 10 minutes of digging to uncover. So if Verge thinks this is a credible source that really speaks volumes.

Oh please, numerous scientists and governments tracked the Rocket debris going down over Cotes d’Ivoire. It landed somewhere there for sure. Analysts think the photo is credible. The preponderance of evidence points in a clear direction, we’re not trying to convict someone of murder here.

What do you think fell in Cotes d’Ivoire? What level of proof would be sufficient? Why are you so willing to believe the CCO line here? How have they demonstrated evidence to the contrary? If it burned up in reentry surely they have proof no? Where’s there investigation?

You seemed to have entirely ignored my comment?

The fact is that this shady site was linked as a source, and it's in fact the first external link in a decently long article.

I hardly matters that the local reporting from the village isn't very good. The rocket is KNOWN to have gone down in that part of Cote d'Ivoire which you are willfully ignoring. What is more likely, that part of the rocket did land on the edge of that village in line with it's known ballistic trajectory or that it's fake and a bunch of scientists, governments, and groups watching objects in orbit are all part of a conspiracy?

You're engaged in gish gallop jumping form one unrelated small critique to the next while ignoring that we know the rocket didn't burn up and a hunk of it did land in Cote d'Ivoire. We know China lied about it burning up on reentry.

Why are you ignoring all of that? Why are you carrying water for the CCP on this?

What? Ignoring my comment and instead writing an incoherent rant twice-in-a-row really is bizarre.

If there isn't a substantive point, or a clarification, to add, then don't reply and save your credibility.

Anyways, I will explain again:

Local reporting is the only potential source of evidence that anything fell on land at all. Not just for this case, but for nearly all debris cases.

Anyone not in the local area wouldn't know if anything actually hit the ground. With audio-visual evidence being a part of it, but those still need solid backing by a credible source, not ambiguous language.

The closest thing to solid evidence here seems to be a photo on Twitter of a long pipe on the ground, but no one credible is willing to stake their reputation and claim it definitely is a rocket component.

To clarify the things you are ignoring:

1. Multiple well known and respected experts like Dr.Marco Langbroek and Jonathan McDowell tracked the rocket heading at a low angle over the Atlantic towards Cote d'Ivoire

2. Multiple governments including the US released statements saying they believe it went down there

3. An infrasound station on the ground there picked up the debris traveling overhead[1].

What more do you really need? It seems clear it must have hit land.

[1] https://twitter.com/SinaZerbo/status/1260323482396774400

Okay this seems somewhat more substantive though still a tangent of my original point that The Verge linked to a clearly untrustworthy source, which impacts their credibility.

It’s just some shitty local news outlet… I wouldn’t except most real papers to have a reporter who just knows a guy in that random little village.

If you speak French there are some other sources from larger regional papers, but I didn’t dig in too much, and my vocabulary doesn’t cover rocket words.

You have accused myself and MichaelZuo of "taking the word of the Chinese government" and "carrying water for the CCP" respectively (based on nothing), and yet you continue to hold up the word of the US government and military as reliable and authoritative regarding their primary geopolitical rival.

the real issue is “what is the probability of human injury or death?” Is it 1% per launch? 0.01% 0.000001%

The area of the earth’s surface occupied by humans (not their stuff, but the people themselves) is around 8000 km^2 (1m^2 per person) out of a total Earth surface area of 510 million km^2. so the probability is around 1.6E-5 or 0.0016% per launch. This obviously doesn’t account for the specific trajectory or population distribution, but gives us a rough order of magnitude.

I would prefer they didn’t do it also, and it definitely loses them international good will - but it’s a pretty low (but non-zero) risk.

[typo corrected]

It's just a known issue that could be trivially avoided in the design phase. Even building for controlled reentry could have allowed them to accurately dump it in the ocean 100% of the time. It just super dick-ish to not do that and lie about every time you launch. The lie that the whole thing burns up on reentry is also super shitty and indefensible when these huge hunks of metal are trivially tracked by scientists and governments world wide.

20 metric ton is roughly the same as Falcon Heavy center core(unloaded), for visual reference. It's not a random stage 2 left in orbit, it's the F9S1 coming down.

For example, some of the US Navy's Transit satellites in the early 1960s were powered by non-containerized SNAP RTG's (plutonium) destroyed when they de-orbited, releasing Pu-238 into the atmosphere.

The Cassini Mission was launched in 1997 with 72+ pounds of Pu aboard. NASA calculated the risks of 'inadvertent reentry' beforehand.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20030505132905/http://www.icsu-s...] [https://www.space4peace.org/articles/morenukesinspace.htm]

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