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China Confirms Its Space Station Is Falling Back to Earth (popularmechanics.com)
The Tiangong-1, China's prototype space station which was launched in September 2011, is no longer under the control of China. PopularMechanics reports: China's Tiangong-1 space station has been orbiting the planet for about 5 years now, but recently it was decommissioned and the Chinese astronauts returned to the surface. In a press conference, China announced that the space station would be falling back to earth at some point in late 2017. Normally, a decommissioned satellite or space station would be retired by forcing it to burn up in the atmosphere. This type of burn is controlled, and most satellite re-entries are scheduled to burn up over the ocean to avoid endangering people. However, it seems that China's space agency is not sure exactly when Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere, which implies that the station has been damaged somehow and China is no longer able to control it. This is important because it means Tiangong-1 won't be able to burn up in a controlled manner. All we know is it will burn up at some point in late 2017, but it is impossible to predict exactly when or where. This means that there is a chance debris from the falling spacecraft could strike a populated area.
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/...
Well done China. Well done.
We need to know where to look to see the fireworks!
"Oops, I guess we're going to have to do another orbital weapons test."
> which implies that the station has been damaged somehow
How the fuck does that imply that?
To me, it implies the Chinese don't give a fuck.
What do you expect from something manufactured in China?
I guess they forgot to copy that part. They really are taking the "Made in China" to a new level of "I definately can't trust this"
However, in order to disavow themselves from any responsibility, they are claiming now, that they can't control it, even as it will assuredly hit a target that threatens vital Chinese Interests.
The only question is who tops the list? I'm thinking Donald Trump, but it might be Margaret Cho or perhaps the Denver Broncos.
If it crashes on your house, who pays?
Yes, but there is also a chance that a tree limb will fall on my car precisely as I am driving under it. And a chance I am Schrodinger's cat, dreaming of being me while waiting for someone to press a button.
The odds against the station landing in a crowd are pretty high. To get a simplified view of this, consider drawing a line in a circle around the earth and how many times it would hit a crowd.
Real lawyers write in C++
A specific address on Pennsylvania Avenue, to be exact.
I don't care which occupant ends up living there, it would be a good thing.
Take your soy sauce pills and put your helmet on.
China Confirms Its Space Station Is Falling Back to Earth
Given that they just launched Tiangong-2 a few days ago, it might have been nice to clarify that it's Tiangong-1 which is falling to Earth.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
what a load of shit, I can think of a capitalist superpower that didn't give a flying *** where its space station with NINE TIMES the mass of this one crash landed
They're not sure where it's going to land huh?
So when it accidentally hits Tokyo with pinpoint accuracy we're all going to be astonished.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Come on China, I could use a free taco!
Or Australialiaia will send them a bill for littering!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The real reason why it's coming down is because North Korea shot it down and China is too embarrassed to admit it.
(DPNK was aiming for the International Space Station and their aim was a little off.)
North Korea will save us. They've been testing their missiles for a while now. I'm sure they'd be happy to nuke it into oblivion.
What an excellent way of launching a surprise attack. A 'failing' satellite filled with missiles or bombs. Any books with such an attack?
Someone call Michael Bay and tell him about a great movie idea.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Nuke it out of orbit! It's the only way to be sure.
You realize that NASA isn't a capitalist institution right? Not that it matters as a private company would be just as careless, but your argument is off base.
There are two possible outcomes if it ends up being on a collision course with Tokyo.
1) Giant robots will intercept the station, causing some collateral damage, but at least one civilian will be photographed looking up to see the former space station stopped mere meters above his or her head.
2) Tokyo will explode with the force equivalent of solar flare.
Of course, the profit motive is always there -- you just don't see it because it's hidden at the very top. If the people running the government weren't operating on self-interest, then governments wouldn't continuously expand in terms of both power and revenue, year after year. But history shows that continuous expansion is the norm, not the exception. That's the work of a self-interested businessman, not a selfless "public servant".
Reminds me of Real Genius... http://www.tzr.io/yarn-clip/1b...
It's funny. By the time of the Skylabs fall the people at the office bet where it would fall down on using a Mercator map. The lowbrows were fast in picking the large squares at high latitudes, in hopes of securing more chances, according to their little brains. Nobody picked the Indian ocean next to Australia. I didn't partake. I can see it happening all over again.
When it takes out targets in Washington, D.C., they can say "it was just a happy circumstance."
Stupid sexy Flanders.
" . . .vunce rockets go up, who cares where they come down,
'That's not my department', says Werner Von Braun. . . . "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If they are smart, they will launch a set of final missions that involve attaching parachutes to the main large pieces.
Break off the smaller, delicate things, intentionally, then program the parachutes to deploy when it hits 8 miles above the land.
If we can parachute material onto mars, we should be able to do the same onto earth.
I bet they could
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
But that would send debris hurtling through space that would kill the American astronauts in the middle of a spacewalk to do repairs on the Hubble telescope. C'mon people, this is exactly how Gravity started!!
I want one!
Me, I'm more worried about the looming debt crisis.
The article said this was well below the reputation of other space programs.
NASA is probably the largest space program and arguably owned by the most free market oriented nation in the world.
This is why you shouldn't use prototype code in production. Throw the prototype away and rewrite!
The Day Skylab Crashed to Earth: Facts About the First U.S. Space Station’s Re-Entry
July 11, 2012 By Elizabeth Hanes
On July 11, 1979, the world watched as Skylab, America’s first manned space station, hurtled toward Earth. With the massive orbiter nearing re-entry, reactions on the ground ranged from fear to celebration to commercial opportunism. On the 33rd anniversary of Skylab’s fiery return to terra firma, find out more about the causes and fallout of the crash, as well as how NASA scrambled to cope with it.
1. Skylab was made to go up but not to come back down.
The space station known as Skylab was designed as an orbiting workshop for research on scientific matters, such as the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body. Because the project represented the next step toward wider space exploration, NASA threw itself into successfully putting Skylab in orbit. Unfortunately, the agency spent far less time and energy planning how to gracefully bring the space station back to Earth at the end of its mission. Even though Skylab was devised for just a nine-year lifespan, NASA failed to build in any control or navigation mechanisms to return the orbiter to terra firma. Doing so would have “cost too much,” administrator Robert Frosch said at the time. This lack of preparation presented a problem in late 1978, when NASA engineers discovered the station’s orbit was decaying rapidly. Skylab had become a 77-ton loose cannon. As word spread of the impending uncontrolled crash of the space station, Congress and the public demanded to know how NASA intended to avoid human casualties from the potential disaster. NASA responded with a plan to rehabilitate the laboratory-in-the-sky. The agency would use a new tool in development—the space shuttle—to boost Skylab into a higher orbit, thereby extending the lab’s operational life by about five years. After that, the station would simply continue to orbit as a shell, like the millions of tons of floating detritus now known as space junk. Funding and other snafus delayed the shuttle project, however, so NASA had to come up with a new plan. On July 11, 1979, with Skylab rapidly descending from orbit, engineers fired the station’s booster rockets, sending it into a tumble they hoped would bring it down in the Indian Ocean. They were close. While large chunks did go into the ocean, parts of the space station also littered populated areas of western Australia. Fortunately, no one was injured.
2. In June 1979, as the crash approached, Skylab-inspired parties and products were all the rage in the United States.
The imminent crash of Skylab midway through 1979 coincided with Americans’ declining confidence in their government. The stagnant economy and a second oil crisis dropped Congress’ approval rating to just 19 percent that year. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that many people took an irreverent view of the demise of Skylab, a government project. The Associated Press reported several instances of “Skylab parties” occurring across the United States. In St. Louis, Missouri, the “Skylab Watchers and Gourmet Diners Society” announced plans to view Skylab’s last orbit during a garden gathering at which “hard hats or similar protective headgear” were required. The Charlotte, North Carolina, News-Observer reported that a local hotel designated itself an “official Skylab crash zone (complete with painted target)” and was holding a poolside disco party. Mocking NASA’s inability to say precisely where Skylab would land, entrepreneurs across the country sold T-shirts emblazoned with large bullseyes. Another enterprising individual took a different tack and sold cans of “Skylab repellent.”
3. In Europe and Asia, fear of Skylab’s re-entry prompted unusual safety measures.
While
Maybe our armchair expectations about normal satellite decommission are all wrong and in all cases the cost of executing a controlled reentry is actually greater than the expected cleanup cost of an uncontrolled reentry.
Could someone dub John Belushi's Skylab sketch in Mandarin?
We can only hope it hits a Syrian refugee camp.
I wouldn't wish a space station falling out of sky on my worst enemy. We are all in this together. That's the truth. Now hide under the couch until the debris clears. :-)
Yea its not like companies don't open subsidiaries which they simply declare bankrupt to avoid the financial consequences of their incompetence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Chinese to US: Remember that hilarious time when you bombed our embassy? Good times...good times. This time, our bad. Smiles.
10 times cheaper, 3 times worse...
Seriously, they simply don't value human life as much as we do. Whereas Western governments consider a human life to be worth nearly $10 million, Russia, for example, values theirs at no more than $2 million. In China, according to WorldBank study, it is less than 2 mln yuan, or less than $300K.
So, it may make sense for NASA to spend an extra $1 million to reduce a risk to one human's life by 10%. But for the Chinese to spend $1 million, the risk has to be 30+ times greater...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Where did Avery Thompson got the idea that China has lost control of Tiangong-1?
Quote from his article: http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/satellites/a22936/tiangong-falling-to-earth/,
"In a press conference on Wednesday, Chinese officials appear to have confirmed what many observers have long suspected: that China is no longer in control of its space station."
That "press conference" he referred to as his proof, says exactly the opposite, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-09/14/c_135687885.htm,
""Based on our calculation and analysis, most parts of the space lab will burn up during falling," she said, adding that it was unlikely to affect aviation activities or cause damage to the ground.
China has always highly valued the management of space debris, conducting research and tests on space debris mitigation and cleaning, Wu said.
Now, China will continue to monitor Tiangong-1 and strengthen early warning for possible collision with objects. If necessary, China will release a forecast of its falling and report it internationally, said Wu."
Or they can use their anti-satellite weapons to break up the contraption into smaller (and thus more likely to burn in the atmosphere) pieces, while simultaneously:
Not that we don't already know that.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Except the toilet.
Once you take the profit motive out and allow centrally planned offices to remove the research redundancy and the creativity of committees to combine in these controlled ways ... there is no limit to the disasters you can accomplish.
Don't forget the importance of having everyone on the engineering team educated in public institutions.
What a load of shit.
There can be bad management in private organizations just like there is bad management in public organizations.
And if we're talking about research and development, the public always does the bulk of pure research anyways..
Why did we allow China do have a space program in the first place ?
Maybe Elon can send up a Dragon on one of the recovered Falcon 9's to try to dock and bring it down gracefully...
After all, they helped us rescue Matt Damon from Mars.
Anybody can work under ideal circumstances. -- Jeff K. (January 4, 2001)
The calculations to predict when the space station will actually de-orbit are nearly as complex as weather forecasts. It's impossible to do long term, accurate predictions. As for damage, that is one possibility, though lack of fuel to do the final de-orbit burn is also a possibility. As far as suggestions to do weapons testing on it to break up the station, that is a absolutely terrible idea; it just adds to the growing orbital space junk problem.
No kidding. Chinese government confirmed (yet again) for not valuing human life overly much.
The US and Russia have both had plenty of satellites re-enter the atmosphere completely uncontrolled. If you are going to throw shade at least don't be a hypocrite while you do it. If the thing malfunctioned then this is exactly the expected final result.
If the damned thing strikes in a populated area and people die, I say they drag them into The Hauge for a crime against humanity.
Got any other impotent rage you'd like to get out?
Every time someone does that things bust up into millions of fragments and become far more dangerous to astronauts and satellites. With all the money being blown on the space waste (formerly space race), you would think someone could strap another rocket to it and tow it into the ocean
Implies implies implies..
They only thing I read was that they're not sure when they're going to burn it, the rest is purely your imagination ;).
If you are worried please pick up your phone and ask them or better yet ask PopularMechanics to ask them as they should have in the first place.
I'm sorry for ruining the fun, but some people (those with China predujice) seemed to take it a bit too seriously.
Of course, private organizations with bad management will fail compared to similar organizations with good management.
Unless they're Too Big To Fail. Whoops!
orbiting workshop for research on scientific matters
Skylab gave us lots of insight of space station occupancy from dealing with bone/muscle loss, designing crew quarters with vertical references, preparing daily task lists that are not so nitpicky on details.
“Skylab parties”
I remember news clips (yep, I'm that old) of various people entering in bomb shelters. In 1979, Air and Space magazine (or some other well known magazine) had a drawing showing structural ring and large water cylinders descending on a sleepy midwest town (oh the horror of Skylab is falling, Skylab is falling).
$10,000 prize to the first person to deliver a piece of Skylab debris
I remember that, the debris wasn't much, looked like charcoal briquits. I remember after STS-1 launch and missing tiles on the OMS pods, same SF newspaper offered a prize for first person to deliver a missing tile or portion. Columnist wrote, "We blew the bank on the Skylab prize so this award will be only one dollar."
possible to own a piece of Skylab debris today.
This reminds me I do own a piece of Skylab! A poster I bought from NSS as part of their fundraising campaigns is a Skylab poster with a one inch square of the O2 or water tank insulation. It's somewhere along with my stack of papers and posters of all kinds of various stuff (much of what I forgot).
mfwright@batnet.com
Would you much rather that it hang around in orbit and strike other active satellites?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
while CHina touts it's many 'successes', they aren't as technologically advanced as 1970's USA. Awesome job, China, it took you 50 years to get up to 40 years ago.
It doesn't say the opposite, rather it carefully avoids saying they are actually in control.
And we can nod and agree and then mutter under our breath, "Damn, it missed Dianne Feinstein and Newt Gingrich by *this* much."
...they will build to whatever spec....YOU PAY FOR.
are frothing and spitting in anger, but they haven't even read the actual statement. This is no different from any of the other satellites or few stations that have slowly come down. Typical hostile, dumb and ignorant Americans posting, looking for anything to give themselves a wrong idea and blame the Chinese for something.
Oh sure they should have predicted that you would be sceptical about that and answered a question that no one asked. That makes sense!
The real question is whether or not it's going to have it's blinker on for the entire trip down.
You realize that NASA isn't a capitalist institution right? Not that it matters as a private company would be just as careless, but your argument is off base.
wait, NASA isn't a corporation and not a legal person???
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Well, not at the moment - they would just have an approximation. But as we get closer, NORAD should have a very accurate idea of where and when it will re-enter.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
After that, the station would simply continue to orbit as a shell, like the millions of tons of floating detritus now known as space junk. (...)
I don't think humans have ever sent millions of tons of stuff into space.
Excuse the nitpicking.
Can they possibly direct it to drop on top of North Korea and do the world a favor? Iran would be the second best choice.
I never said NASA was. Reading comprehension opportunity exists for you.
Ellen Muth hit by a toilet seat... AGAIN!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Where the surviving chunks did rain down, Australia, is pretty large too
Isn't everything in orbit is falling toward the earth? Its just that they also move perpendicular to this fall with sufficient speed as to miss the earth entirely. That's the definition or being in orbit.
Wait wait, there's a TV show about that. China should sue for copyright infringement.
Damn made in China crap... Never lasts like it should. Next they will be telling us it was all the cheap knock off parts they used...
Sure. You volunteering?
I just love Internet Tough Guys. Do you seriously think your pretend threat would actually concern anyone?
I don't like the Chinese government...
Nobody cares. Especially those of us who have actually been outside the USA at some point.
We all should be thankful they didn't decide to blow it up and add another 10k pieces of space junk, at least it'll re-enter in relatively one piece.
TFA seems to imply that the crew of the 'space station' returned to Earth recently, but the wikipedia article says that the last crew returned in 2013 after staying only 11 days on the 'space station'. So the article has to be taken with more than a small grain of salt.
Anyone else remember people selling/buying skylab helmets?
...Good, I hope that it falls right on Shanghai Tower!
This is in preparation for a future missile test.
You realize that NASA isn't a capitalist institution right? Not that it matters as a private company would be just as careless, but your argument is off base.
No, it wouldn't, out of fear that the government would come down of them HARD if they did. But... who can come down hard on a government?
Need to find my old tee shirt that had the target on it's front.
Actually I was thinking more about how Dead Like Me started. If the toilet seat from this space station kills a young lady on the west coast USA then we have some sort of... something. Prescient?
Not like I wish anyone dead from this but if someone did die then I'd laugh at the absurdity of it. I'd also wonder what else that show got right.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No, the article says exactly that the Chinese have lost control over it. They are calculating that it will break up on re-entry, but they have no control over when it will break up. Having control means you could fire retro-rockets at the right time to have it come down over the ocean. There is nothing in your quote that says they have ANY control.
Meanwhile back in China top Space agency officials congratulated themselves for not calling the space station boomerang.
What is the law of the sea say about abandoned ships? Would not this law also apply to abandoned spacecraft?
As I recall if a ship or cargo is abandoned at sea anyone can come along and claim it as their own, especially if the flotsam and jetsam is a navigation hazard. I'd like to see some private company raise funds to capture this space station, restore it to a stable orbit, and claim it as their own.
Why a private organization and not NASA? Because I don't expect any government space agency would be willing to to this if only because of the funding involved but also because it might be a political problem. A private company could, maybe, avoid the political problems. I'd also think that there would be a lot of bragging rights in pulling this off.
This space station is expected to fall out of the sky within a year, can anyone plan a capture and re-orbit mission in that time?
I'm assuming the legal issues can be solved in that time, China doesn't just shoot it down, and there's enough value in doing this. Bragging rights gets one only so far, is there anything else of value to be gained here? As in, what use is the space station assuming someone can grab it.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Is it worth saving? How hard can be to send up a repair mission and readjust the orbit? I mean if you can't do that, what the hell are you doing in space to begin with? .... Oh, military.
:T:R:A:N:S:
That depends on how the destruction is done. A good comparison is between China's destruction of Fengyun 1C in 2007 and the US' destruction of USA-193 in 2008. The former was done at a higher altitude than the latter. The former created 3425 catalogued(*) pieces of debris, some of which will remain in orbit for decades, whereas the latter created 174 catalogued(*) pieces of debris, none of which remained in orbit two years later.
Tiangong-1 is at a lower altitude than Fengyun 1C (perhaps obvious, since it's about to deorbit), so it's not out of the question for China to destroy it in a way that doesn't make a permanent mess. I'm not advocating that, I don't know whether that's a good idea, I don't know if China has the capability to do that, I'm just disputing your blanket assertion that it's an "absolutely terrible idea".
(*) I mean catalogued by the US military and made available unclassified. It's worth noting that the US military usually keeps orbital data about classified satellites classified. It seems to have made an exception for the debris of USA-193, perhaps for good public relations in discussions such as this one.
There was one portion weighing over a ton that was brought on the back of a truck to display at the Miss Universe pagent in Perth:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/that-time-a-space-station-became-part-of-the-miss-universe-pageant/278953/
Great movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Until_the_End_of_the_World
Plot (NO spoiler): "In late 1999, an orbiting Indian nuclear satellite is out of control and predicted to re-enter the atmosphere, threatening unknown populated areas of the Earth. Mass populations trying to flee the likely impact sites cause a worldwide panic. [...] "
The US should offer to blow it up for them 8).