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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

These have fallen out of the sky before killing people on the ground:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_3B

They launched it in Sichuan in a fairly populated region. Supposedly, only 6 people died, but there are rumors that many more were killed.

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> Supposedly, only 6 people died, but there are rumors that many more were killed.

Deaths and injuries are always underreported in Chinese media and government figures, because there cannot be any information that is damaging to the public image of the CCP; and if the CCP control everything, then there can't be damaging information about anything.

I looked up the region and its like 1000km inland! It's so strange that they do this.

Nearly everyone else (US, Japan, ESA, India) launches it from sea-coasts. I guess Russia does the same thing (Baikanour), but I haven't heard of such incidents from their side.

Edit: Apparently Roscosmos' stuff usually falls on unpopulated regions in Siberia. Surprised China didn't build a launch center on the coast (probably still an issue because of the numerous islands looking out from their coast).

They have since built a launch center of the coast. But they still use this inland one sometimes.

The Russian far east is very sparsely populated. Sichuan is heavily populated in the regions where they launched this (it also has unpopulated Tibetan regions, but too many mountains).

Here is a better story about the launch and the conditions afterward s.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/disaster-a...

One thing that wiki omits is that the foreign observers were not allowed to leave the launch site for several hours and it appears that during this time the entire area was swept by SAR or recovery teams.

Also not noted in Wiki is that the launch took place at 3am, so if everyone was evacuate for safety per the official claim they would have had to have overnight accommodation.

Edit add: Here is another and perhaps better link https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2323/1

> only 6 people died

Only?!

The last starships have all exploded in some sort of spectacular fashion, but I don’t think anyone has ever had to worry about a booster exploding on their head.

I mean, tens of billions of dollar (equivalent) have been spent on the Long March rocket program, as with any major rocket. If you spent that much on normal construction, you'd see a lot more than 6 deaths, and indeed I'm sure more rocketry workers were killed than random outsiders.

For reference, there's of order 1 death per billion dollars spent in construction in the US per year. The statistical value of life in the US is roughly $10M, so it's only 1% of cost. I presume in China the statistical value is lower by a factor of 3-10, so it wouldn't be surprising that many dozens or even hundred of workers had been killed since the program started.

Considering now around 700 people die every day in Chinese traffic accidents, it isn't that huge of a price (well, back in 1996 I'm sure that number was much lower).

Yes, "only" in the sense that 6 isn't the real figure, not that it is an acceptable number of deaths.

> These have fallen out of the sky before killing people on the ground

It would be very strange if the rockets fell out of the sky after killing people on the ground.

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