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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.
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++
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
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
No my guess is its deliberate. The low risk was deemed acceptable and they can save money. They don't want to spend money to prevent whatever remote odds it may kill or injure anyone on Earth. That's their attitude.
Would be nice if it crashed in downtown Beijing.
Australia. I'm sure the kangaroos will be thrilled again. Skylab was an absolute blast last time.
"Would be nice if it crashed in downtown Beijing."
No. Hopefully in the middle of the ocean, someplace like Fiery Cross Reef.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
We assure you that it' a complete coincidence that it's on a collision course with Washington D.C. Our most humble apologies for any inconvenience...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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
I've seen no evidence that China is incapable of producing high-quality stuff. Thing is, US companies going to China for manufacturing aren't deciding to go to China because the US can't build stuff that's high quality enough -- they're going there to save money. So they go to China and ask for the cheapest something can be manufactured and they get ... the cheapest manufactured stuff. If those companies -- really, the people who own the quality of the products they're selling -- didn't like the quality of the product, they'd either negotiate better quality (and higher price) with their Chinese manufacturers or they'd move their manufacturing to someone who can do a better job. They don't. Why? Because that's exactly how they like it.
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/...
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."
You realize over 70% of the shit in your home is made in China right? Including things that have last over 5 and even 10 years.
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.
Skylab fell on my defenceless homeland. On News at Ten (ITN), Reginald Bosanquet, overcome with disbelief, read his autocue one line at a time. ‘Skylab broke up, with debris. Streaking across the night sky and heading. Thousands of miles across the. Ocean for Australia.’
At least Reggie wasn’t entirely speechless. I’m bound to confess that I was, since until that point I had been an admirer of President Carter. But when they start strafing your own country with tons of red-hot supersonic junk you can’t help wondering whether there might not be some substance in all those theories about US imperialism.
Clive James, 1979
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..
It only takes a cursory review of the chinese economy to understand that government there definitely does not own "all the business". Having spent time in china, I can tell you that it is probably one of the most hyper-capitalistic societies that I have ever seen.
What it doesn't have, that exists in the west, is a robust regulatory regime to prevent false advertising, dangerous products, etc.
After all, they helped us rescue Matt Damon from Mars.
Anybody can work under ideal circumstances. -- Jeff K. (January 4, 2001)
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?
*snicker*
I wonder if people who type that phrase in little sound-effect punctuation marks realize how much they sound like a priggish, effete twelve year old who got into the third-scale faux fraternity at his private New England boarding school because daddy also got sent there by his annoyed (and annoying) parents.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
it's not deliberate, it's out of warranty. like everything chinese that's broken.
This is exactly it. I find when I negotiate with Chinese companies that they tend to be very accommodating and they try to give me whatever I ask for. If you want a feature, they will add it. In fact, I once had a DSLAM company add protection circuit (protect against DC polarity reversal to avoid fireworks) to their equipment just for me along with some software changes. The trouble happens when you tell them you want it cheap. They will cut every corner and give you the cheapest piece of trash you've ever seen..
Its the same with outsourcing: When you go cheap, you get all of the people who couldn't get jobs elsewhere.
And China-Japan tensions have been, er, tense, for thousands of years, and especially since WWII.
It's because of the China-Japan confrontation that the US is involved. By ensuring Japan could not rebuild its military post-WWII the US had to promise to protect Japan. So if China acts against Japan then the US has to step in and before you know it we have WWIII on our hands. This is why the South China Sea situation is such a concern. One nasty flair-up over some sandy reefs (the ecology of which China has trashed btw) and drilling rights and I worry which way the future could go.
The GPP was being funny about China's space station "accidentally-on-purpose" crashing into Tokyo. The PP then made a quip that Japan's giant robots would defend them. And now here I am, explaining all of this like a moron to some idiot AC on /. ...damn, I need another drink!
I don't think that's really a choice, but no, I don't want that.
I mainly posted about Skylab because I am amazed by the lack of historical context in a lot of the comments here.
Ellen Muth hit by a toilet seat... AGAIN!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
At least NASA planned to, and attempted to, deorbit Skylab into the southern Indian Ocean. That they screwed up and it hit Australia was certainly a giant screw-up on their part, sure. However, having a plan but failing to execute the plan properly, and not giving a rat's backside about where it lands in the first place, are pretty far apart.
Typical Chinese manufacturing "quality" control here, eh?
What are you talking about, Doc? All the best stuff is made in China
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
We assure you that it' a complete coincidence that it's on a collision course with Washington D.C. Our most humble apologies for any inconvenience...
Inconvenience hell, I would call that in incredible gesture of goodwill on the part of the Chinese.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
The Chinese also had a plan to deorbit over the ocean, loss of control has screwed that plan. As for Skylab, as an older Aussie I remember it quite well, it was a huge news story here, NASA were not confident they knew where it would land (even with full control), Melbourne and Perth were real possibilities but they were hoping for the ocean. At the end of the day it landed closer to Perth than the ocean.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.