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Comment by cycrutchfield | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>"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.

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.

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.

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.

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