The US and Russia didn't do this. Both space programs either used upper stages to boost into orbit or were small enough to burn up on reentry. The Long March 5B has a giant rocket 20 metric ton that is too big to burn up and falls to Earth in an uncontrolled fashion.
20 metric ton is roughly the same as Falcon Heavy center core(unloaded), for visual reference. It's not a random stage 2 left in orbit, it's the F9S1 coming down.
Dumping 20 tons of metal from orbit isn't a "calculated risk" its sloppy and dangerous. They could have built the rocket using 50 years of experience knowing this could be an issue, instead they just lie and say it will burn up. They already dropped one on a village.
the real issue is “what is the probability of human injury or death?” Is it 1% per launch? 0.01% 0.000001%
The area of the earth’s surface occupied by humans (not their stuff, but the people themselves) is around 8000 km^2 (1m^2 per person) out of a total Earth surface area of 510 million km^2. so the probability is around 1.6E-5 or 0.0016% per launch. This obviously doesn’t account for the specific trajectory or population distribution, but gives us a rough order of magnitude.
I would prefer they didn’t do it also, and it definitely loses them international good will - but it’s a pretty low (but non-zero) risk.
It's just a known issue that could be trivially avoided in the design phase. Even building for controlled reentry could have allowed them to accurately dump it in the ocean 100% of the time. It just super dick-ish to not do that and lie about every time you launch. The lie that the whole thing burns up on reentry is also super shitty and indefensible when these huge hunks of metal are trivially tracked by scientists and governments world wide.
It happened in May of 2020. The debris landed in Côte d'Ivoire and the debris was spotted in it’s way down by a local infrasound station. The debris was tracked in the atmosphere by multiple governments and there are photos. Google it for yourself.
Astro physicist Johnathan McDowell[1] was tracking it. I doubt the Cotes d'Ivoire did an official investigation due to their general lack of funds, and China denies that the Long March can even reenter the atmosphere so they didn't go check it out. Here's another story that references local reports[2]. An article from Ars quoting the US Space Force confirming entry over the Atlantic headed toward Cotes d'Ivoire[3].
Just anything more conclusive than social media posts. An actual investigation into these reports and purported debris fragments.
According to Wikipedia, Cotes d'Ivoire is one of the largest economies in West Africa, representing 40% of the total GDP of the Economic Community of West African States.
There are numerous scientists and government agencies on the record making official press releases claiming to have tracked the rocket debris to an area of Cotes d'Ivoire. There are photos in Cotes d'Ivoire of wreckage consistent with the rocket. Why do you need an "official investigation"? Who would you trust to do that? Why are you taking the word of the Chinese government?
Oh please, numerous scientists and governments tracked the Rocket debris going down over Cotes d’Ivoire. It landed somewhere there for sure. Analysts think the photo is credible. The preponderance of evidence points in a clear direction, we’re not trying to convict someone of murder here.
What do you think fell in Cotes d’Ivoire? What level of proof would be sufficient? Why are you so willing to believe the CCO line here? How have they demonstrated evidence to the contrary? If it burned up in reentry surely they have proof no? Where’s there investigation?
I hardly matters that the local reporting from the village isn't very good. The rocket is KNOWN to have gone down in that part of Cote d'Ivoire which you are willfully ignoring. What is more likely, that part of the rocket did land on the edge of that village in line with it's known ballistic trajectory or that it's fake and a bunch of scientists, governments, and groups watching objects in orbit are all part of a conspiracy?
You're engaged in gish gallop jumping form one unrelated small critique to the next while ignoring that we know the rocket didn't burn up and a hunk of it did land in Cote d'Ivoire. We know China lied about it burning up on reentry.
Why are you ignoring all of that? Why are you carrying water for the CCP on this?
What? Ignoring my comment and instead writing an incoherent rant twice-in-a-row really is bizarre.
If there isn't a substantive point, or a clarification, to add, then don't reply and save your credibility.
Anyways, I will explain again:
Local reporting is the only potential source of evidence that anything fell on land at all. Not just for this case, but for nearly all debris cases.
Anyone not in the local area wouldn't know if anything actually hit the ground. With audio-visual evidence being a part of it, but those still need solid backing by a credible source, not ambiguous language.
The closest thing to solid evidence here seems to be a photo on Twitter of a long pipe on the ground, but no one credible is willing to stake their reputation and claim it definitely is a rocket component.
1. Multiple well known and respected experts like Dr.Marco Langbroek and Jonathan McDowell tracked the rocket heading at a low angle over the Atlantic towards Cote d'Ivoire
2. Multiple governments including the US released statements saying they believe it went down there
3. An infrasound station on the ground there picked up the debris traveling overhead[1].
What more do you really need? It seems clear it must have hit land.
You have accused myself and MichaelZuo of "taking the word of the Chinese government" and "carrying water for the CCP" respectively (based on nothing), and yet you continue to hold up the word of the US government and military as reliable and authoritative regarding their primary geopolitical rival.
Okay this seems somewhat more substantive though still a tangent of my original point that The Verge linked to a clearly untrustworthy source, which impacts their credibility.
It’s just some shitty local news outlet… I wouldn’t except most real papers to have a reporter who just knows a guy in that random little village.
If you speak French there are some other sources from larger regional papers, but I didn’t dig in too much, and my vocabulary doesn’t cover rocket words.
