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Chinese Satellite Crashes Into House
toggleflipflop writes "In China, a returning satellite crashed into a house. No one was hurt.
More details in this article. Apparently inhabited by an eternal optimist: 'The satellite landed in our home. Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year,' the tenant of the wrecked apartment was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
According to the People's Daily's article on the subject nothing seems to have gone wrong."
Knowing how deeply the government of China truly cares for its people, I imagine it was more a case of "his house was in our target landing zone" as opposed to "we missed our target landing zone and hit his house."
Only in China would someone take a large hunk of metal destroying their home as a sign of good luck. The rest of us would probably be thinking that some higher power hates us.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
As opposed to the corporate-run media in the US? You should never trust any media outlet completely.
China's spy satellites still use film. They deorbit them in order to retrieve the images.
'The satellite landed in our home. Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year.
Eternal optimist? I doubt it. I'm sure the villager bit his tongue, and wisely refrained from voicing his true opinion.
It's all relative. A broken roof is a minor inconvenience compared to ten years in prison for criticizing the government.
I think that if this happened in the US, the guy would be on MSNBC. And probably put the fucking thing on ebay. Maybe suing the government for rights to it since it landed on his property and maybe even suing them for tresspassing. All the while, Johnny Cochran is speaking at a press conference for him saying something clever. All this commotion would, of course, ensure his 15 minutes and his appearance on Larry King promoting his new book, When Satellites Attack. Maybe even a movie's in the works. Somthing to think about.
why run from Vincenzo?
The iPod is made in China. I think it's not a matter of it being Chinese so much as it being cheap. You buy cheap stuff, you get cheap stuff. That's how life works. :)
My other car is first.
Or he really could have 'good luck' for the year. After all, if you suddenly heard that your brother or your friend's house suddenly burned down with no insurance, chances are you'd at least let him sleep over your house for a couple days. This is China where family is still considered to be the center, not the USA where family is just what you leech off of till you get a job/till you get kicked out.
And how that is different from the american media reporting what the WhiteHouse tells them?
they probably just reported what the government said, before finding out that something else had happened
According to sources mentioned above, the capsule is a re-entry vehicle and it stayed completely intact. Actually it came down via parachute.
That satellite from which this capsule was dropped off has been up there for only last 18 days. My guess is that it hasn't got anything to do with science and very much with military intelligence.
For good part of the cold war both US and USSR used capsules to relay back intel images as radio and camera technology was not yet enough mature to do the job right. The chinese might still be (atleast partially) using robust methods which are proven to work - same with their manned missions.
People managing their space program are definately calculating re-entry trajectories carefully so they know atleast approximately where the retrieval point is. No way they would drop a capsule by accident to populated areas.
I'd say it was a hastened retrieval of latest intelligence, someone needed those images very badly and was ready to take the risk.
Just my two cents.
that a satellite crashed on Chinese soil and didn't hit a person?
According chinese traditional astrology, such event is considered very lucky, because of involvment of heaven element. So the guy's reasoning is very rational in paradigm of his culture. All those of you americans who are slashing and bashing chinese government propaganda in this thread, think at first about your own culture paradigms and government propaganda rooted in them, they are far more dangerous to anybody as well as to you yourself.
There you are, staring at me again.
We are talking about luck, not statistics. A coin coming up heads or tails is one thing, you know if its heads or tails. A satellite crashing through your roof is another. It could have been bad, but hell, in the US people would be writing up long lists of shit they did not have. "Um, that laptop was a panasonic tough book" when the damn thing was a $699 dell special. Hell, it could have killed a burgler. Common sense tells us its a bad thing, but it might be good. The GOV might finaly replace the damn leaky toilet, and the guy will definatly have a new roof.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Your example would unfortunately prove nothing, because unless I were a widespread organizer, the government would rightly see me as mostly non-threatening. It is entirely possible that if I were obnoxious about it, I might be asked not to wear it by someone in a position of authority. If I refused, I would probably unceremoniously be asked to leave the country, as I am not Chinese.
But your point in a certain sense is well taken, because obviously, the USA is a nominally free society whereas the PRC makes no claims of being one. No one in their right mind would literally mean that the governments of the PRC and the USA are similarly repressive; but then that's why my comparison was prefaced with a modifying "sometimes".
In the same way that the slogan, "The USA: better than North Korea" has no substantial value, comparing the state of civic liberties in the PRC to the USA and using the USA's better track record as an indication of superiority is a useless exercise. Of course the USA is better than the PRC where personal freedoms are concerned. This goes without saying.
What is productive is the same comparison made in the other direction. If the PRC fails to meet the USA's standards, no one is surprised; it is when the USA is either the same or inferior to a country like the PRC that we need to begin worrying.
Comparisons of the USA's current state of civic freedoms to the PRC, the DPRK, or Mussolini's Italy are all hyperbole and should be treated as such. The purpose of such comparisons is to underscore the inadvisability of taking such reforms to extremes. Our current erosion of the civil liberties, for example, smacks of totalitarianism. To illustrate the point, I might say that the USA's current standards of something or other are equivalent to the PRC's -- this is meant to alarm you, not instigate a "but the PRC is worse than we are in terms of x, y, and z."
In summary, my point was that the original poster's retort (which essentially was, "The USA is better than the PRC because we don't roll tanks over students") was an oversimplified, propaganda-worthy comparison. It was one of those facile categorizations like, "You're either with us or with the terrorists", or "Things are either good or evil, black or white".
This kind of on/off true/false binary logic demonstratably fails with most real world concepts.
While the Tiananmen square massacre was lamentable, to simply state the USA is better because we have not similarly silenced protesting students is overlooking the huge number of horrible things we have done.
The PRC has many flaws; no one I know denies this -- even the Chinese. But Americans for some reason are wont to deny their own country's significant blunders.
To much of the rest of the world, China did not invade Iraq, or destabilize the entire continent of Latin America for their personal gain, or fight largely hopeless proxy battles with the former USSR in order to stop the spread of communism, because after all, we can't have vassal states choosing their own leaders or system of government. Free elections were never held in South Vietnam because of overwhelming popular support for Ho Chi Minh, etc. We face the same problem now in Iraq -- sure, we can have democracy, but what kind of leaders will the Iraqis elect? Most likely an Islamofacist one.
China's great flaws are these: a poor human rights record and a lack of personal freedoms. Of course, the nation griping the most loudly about the former is one of the few in the developed world that still executes inmates on a regular basis, and is also the one that was responsible for use of torture in Iraq. We may not be in the same league as China in this regard, but to much of the rest of the world, we are seen as a bully criticizing another bully for similar actions.
Regarding its lack of personal freedoms: this mostly means that political speech is not universally protected. Otherwise, you are welcome to sa