A Chinese Rocket Is Wildly Careening Toward Earth This Weekend

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: Trueman

Might be just a 'tad' bit provocative though!

It's gonna happen anyway. Now they have the same arrogant fixation with rockets NK has.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: NorthOfStuff

Who's, the Chinese?

They probably all went home. They didn't care.

No on Diego Garcia.

SO, here we are, nearly 20 hours later...and what do we know???

NOTHING!!!

No photos, no video (and I KNOW there is a bunch!). Just nothing-ness!

Don't you find that weird????

I certainly do.

ETA - Look, the COBRA BALL, and RIVET JOINT, can only stay up for so long.

That's old stuff, but the next-gen isn't!!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I kind of wonder if the US Military shot it down since it was so close to DG. Not as because it was a threat, but because it was there. Kind of like using trash on the carriers as targets when the Navy is out at sea.

Sorry I hit the post.

It's either that, or we went and grabbed it to see if the Chinese have advanced their engineering any.

Those are my guesses, we used it for target practice, or grabbed it to see where the Chinese are at.

a reply to: Guyfriday

There is no indication the satellite (core booster) was shot down. It would have been obvious, and it wasn't.

Is it possible? Yes, but it is very doubtful it happened like that.

DG was a non-issue.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
SO, here we are, nearly 20 hours later...and what do we know???

NOTHING!!!

No photos, no video (and I KNOW there is a bunch!). Just nothing-ness!

Don't you find that weird????

I certainly do.

ETA - Look, the COBRA BALL, and RIVET JOINT, can only stay up for so long.

That's old stuff, but the next-gen isn't!!

Pretty weird imo.

Yeah, I also think it was enough time to find the pieces.

a reply to: Trueman

It went down very close to where the missing flight MH370 disappeared, near the Maldives. Wouldn't it be something if they found the missing plane there if they look for any debris of it?

a reply to: Dutchowl

Well, that's if they really want to find it.

As a Chinese, I condemn the US MSM blatant propaganda against my country.

To be fair. This is not the rocket itself. It is the booster stage which is jettisoned after delivering the payload. The booster stage of every rocket of every country has uncontrolled reentry. There is nothing special about this particular reentry. There are hundreds of similar booster reentries every year. This is nothing but MSM sensationalism of a nothing burger. This is how mass hysteria is made by MSM.

They are launching another Long March 5 tomorrow with a cargo ship to dock with the core module. Same rocket. Same procedure. Same stupid new story. Rinse and repeat. Yawn.

And this is the power of MSM. Something trivial and routine is overblown by MSM and everyone goes into mass hysteria mode over a nothing burger. No wonder everyone in America took a covid vaccine due to MSM sensationalism of a nothing burger minor flu labeled covid.

a reply to: TaiHaChen

Less than half of the US took the vaccine. We don't trust our goverment or MSM.

Can we expect the same news about Chinese rocket fall to Earth uncontrollably for every Chinese rocket launch from now on? I mean they are all the same. So. Or is this a one time news with no repetition? Next rocket launch is expected in a couple of days to the Chinese space station. The exact same uncontrolled rocket reentry. Let's see if there is another same news about uncontrolled Chinese rocket reentry in the next few days.

originally posted by: TaiHaChen
As a Chinese, I condemn the US MSM blatant propaganda against my country.

To be fair. This is not the rocket itself. It is the booster stage which is jettisoned after delivering the payload. The booster stage of every rocket of every country has uncontrolled reentry.

You are the one spreading false propaganda, I'm afraid. The booster is the largest part of the rocket, and your claim is completely false that the booster stage of every rocket of every country has uncontrolled re-entry. Take the Falcon-9 rocket. The first stage booster makes a controlled landing onto a drone ship, and the second stage for low earth orbit missions makes a controlled de-orbit burn to bring it down in a location in the ocean (if everything goes as planned). Here's the controlled landing of the first stage booster.

Rocket Landing on Drone Ship


That's new technology so it's unusual. What's more typical is the way the second stage of that rocket is de-orbited so it falls in the ocean. This shows the controlled re-entry area for a typical second stage booster of LEO Falcon 9.

Intentional Deorbit

This is done for missions where the upper stage has enough remaining fuel reserves to ensure an intentional decay can occur safely. This has been done on every LEO mission since CRS-3 (including Orbcomm OG2), and usually results in the stage being deorbited South-southwest of Australia in the Indian Ocean (close to the area where MH370 was lost). We know this because occasionally SpaceX will post a NOTAM declaring the zone unsafe for a certain time. Here's the CRS-3 NOTAM

That shows the area for a typical planned splashdown area for a controlled de-orbit. It's part of a warning to pilots about debris coming down in that region.

A Huge, Out-Of-Control Chinese Rocket Is About To Fall To Earth

Typically, such large boosters can be steered in such a way that they land in a safe area, usually remote stretches of ocean. But it appears that the core booster used to lift Tianhe did not make the deorbit burn that would have allowed for a more controlled and predictable re-entry.

Instead, the 21-metric-ton rocket burned most of its fuel to get its payload to orbit and is now in orbit itself. So there is either not enough fuel to perform a de-orbit burn that would allow it target a safe re-entry, or that was never part of the plan to begin with.

“This was not an accident, it was poor design of the rocket,” explains Harvard astronomer and expert in all things orbital Jonathan McDowell on Twitter. “The fact that the massive core stage stays in orbit is how this rocket is designed, and that's the easy (but negligent) way to do it.”

Now, if the Chinese rocket had planned to make a de-orbit burn and that burn failed, that can happen to anybody in any country. It has happened to SpaceX rockets. But according to the Harvard astronomer and orbital expert Jonathan McDowell, the Chinese rocket never planned to make any de-orbit burn so it's a negligent design.

By the way, I like the Chinese people I've met and worked with, it's only the decision-makers involved in this rocket design I'm complaining about now. I have also complained about some bad rocket designs NASA has used, like their o-ring failures on the solid rocket boosters that ended up killing some astronauts. So it's not a nationalistic thing, there are opportunities to improve rocket designs everywhere.

There was nothing peculiar about that particular reentry. Every Chinese booster reentry is uncontrolled falling to Earth. Every booster reentry is uncontrolled falling to Earth. There are some rockets currently under development that lands back down and therefore reusable but none of these are operational yet. This is nothing but MSM making a news story about a nothing burger. Tomorrow another Chinese rocket goes up. Why don't they make another news story about that? Uncontrolled Chinese rocket falling to Earth? What a joke. Show you how gullible people are. After 50 to 100 lapses of high speed burn in the atmosphere the aluminum is mostly burned up. Even if what remains lands on a person's house the damage is minimal.

originally posted by: TaiHaChen
There was nothing peculiar about that particular reentry. Every Chinese booster reentry is uncontrolled falling to Earth.

If so then the Chinese rocket designers are negligent, that's avoidable.

Every booster reentry is uncontrolled falling to Earth.

You apparently didn't understand this visual. This is a controlled entry, the second stage booster is planned to come down in this region of the ocean, and SpaceX even warns pilots about this. (see my previous post for link)


So please stop telling lies like "Every booster reentry is uncontrolled". It may be true for Chinese boosters, but it's not true for all boosters.

Every Chinese rocket is like this. It's pretty surprising they made a news about it considering they never made a news about it before.

Tianzhou-2 launch with a LM-7 rocket today. Here go with with another MSM news sensation Chinese rocket uncontrollably fall to Earth and another 20 pages of ATS comments about a nothing burger. Yawn.

a reply to: TaiHaChen

The Chinese appear to be carrying out more and more space launches regularly, huh?

What's the purpose of the one today? Objectives? Where is it going?