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Chinese Satellite Crashes Into House

Posted by timothy on from the in-china-no-less dept.

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."

5 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. No thanks. by wankledot · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Someone once told me that being shit on by a bird was good luck to the Italians... I guess this is like that to the nth degree

    Personally, I'd rather have bad luck and no bird shit on my head (or satellites in my house)

    --
    My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
  2. I don't understand by elid · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "The returning capsule only went through the roof and no one was injured or died. Experts who inspected the return capsule found it was not damaged at all," the report said, quoting local official Ai Yuqing.

    "The landing technology of our country's satellites is very mature and the precision of the landing point is among the best in the world. Members of the public need not worry about this," it also said, quoting Chinese space experts.

    Someone please explain this to me. Did they plan on crashing the thing into this guy's roof?

    1. Re:I don't understand by morcheeba · · Score: 5, Interesting
      That does bring up an interesting question... why did the chinese satellite survive and Genesis was in pieces.

      The main reason would that the Chinese parachute worked while the Genesis failed.

      The other reason would be a weight budget -- the Genesis mission travelled much further, so the energy (and cost) to propel any additional weight would be much more than for the Chinese mission. Thus, it probably wasn't overbuilt.

      The third reason is the mission. The Genesis mission had to open up to expose its collectors, while the chinese mission is a bit unknown. If it was a zero gravity research, its experiments probably didn't need exposure to space. If it produced a massive amount of data that couldn't be transmitted back, the data storage is usually easy to separate from the instruments (including film & camera). Anyone know what it was supposed to do?

      --
      HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
  3. Re:First Image by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Notice that it took that website 2 days after the "landing" to acknowledge that the thing hit a house. This is the news from 2 days ago from that same site:

    Beijing, Oct. 15 (Xinhuanet) -- China has successfully retrieved its 20th recoverable satellite for scientific and technological experiments. The satellite's information capsule returned to earth Friday.

    Link here.

  4. Re:it could get worse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Posted anon to avoid the karma:

    "The strange accident of the MiG-23

    04 July, 1989.

    From the Soviet airbase near Kolobzreg at the seashore of the Baltic Sea in Poland a MiG-23 took off for a training flight. After the take off the pilot, Colonel Skurigin realised that the afterburner of his plane stopped and the power of the engine begun to fall. The altitude at this time was about 130-150 m and the pilot believed that the descending aircraft is unable to fly any longer. Without turning the engine off the pilot ejected and landed safely with his parachute. To the great astonishment of the ground crew the position of the plane fixed and it flew away to the West. The autopilot kept the last direction of the plane. The aircraft was not armed but the ammunition for the 23 mm machine gun was onboard. The phantom plane left the airspace of the former East Germany and violated the West German airspace where it was intercepted and escorted a pair of American F-15s. As the F-15s didn't get permission to fire they let the aircraft flew away. France also alerted its Mirage fighters being in readiness with permission to fire if the phantom plane was dangerous for French built-up areas. Eventually it was unnecessary because after some 900 km the MiG-23 ran out of fuel and crashed in the area of Kortrijk city in Belgium ( NW of Belgium ). A house was ruined due to the crash and a 18 years old young man was buried under the ruins and died."