Chinese rocket plunges uncontrollably into the sea a week after launch – IT Pro – News

It would indeed have been very strange if China hadn’t shared information about it, it can’t hurt either because it’s not a secret military mission. The Global Times, Beijing’s unofficial official journal, has a very enlightening article that sheds a completely different light on the above story:

US slammed for ‘turning blind eye’ to China’s four reports of debris trajectory info in a week

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced on Sunday that the Long March-5B Y3 carrier rocket reentered the Earth’s atmosphere with the vast majority of the device burning up during re-entry, the fifth statement the agency has made reporting the debris’ positions in the past week.

The announcement came amid US accusations against China over not sharing information on the trajectory of the rocket debris, which Chinese experts slammed as being groundless. They stressed that China has shown the most transparency to the international community by sharing predictions of the parameters of the trajectory of the rocket debris. The US has clearly known the facts and such smears come purely out of political purposes.

Debris from the upper stage of the Long March-5B Y3 carrier rocket reentered the atmosphere at 12:55 am on Sunday, with the vast majority of the device burning during re-entry, the CMSA said in a statement on Sunday. The remnants fell into the surrounding sea area at 119.0 degrees east longitude and 9.1 degrees north latitude, read the statement.

However, in a post on Twitter Sunday, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson accused China of not sharing “specific trajectory information” as the rocket fell back to Earth.

“All spacefaring nations should follow established best practices, and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk, especially for heavy-lift vehicles, like the Long March 5B, which carry a significant risk of loss of life and property,” he wrote.

The facts are that the CMSA had already issued four statements reporting the parameters of the upper stage debris of the Long March 5B Yao-3 carrier rocket, covering information of its height of perigee, height of apogee and inclination at different time points every day from Wednesday to Saturday.

“How could the US say that they do not know where the debris would fall after China had made public the relevant parameters?” asked Song Zhongping, a TV commentator who closely follows China’s space program.

“As the largest space power in the world, the US itself can accurately locate the falling point of the remnants given the high measurement and control technology of the country, coupled with the information China had already released. Therefore, its accusations against China are completely for the purpose of smearing and hype,” Song told the Global Times.

In short, China does state, and even elaborately , shared trajectory data from both the missile and the debris. However, this data has not been specially or exclusively shared with NASA, but simply made available as it should be to the entire international community (which also includes the US, although some ex-presidents there see it differently because of the religion called “American exceptionalism” and as “American exemptionalism” is confessed).
After all, I can’t imagine that the engineers at the Chinese or American space agencies wouldn’t be capable enough to calculate where the debris ends up on Earth – CORRECTION: so people only know this when the pieces enter the armosphere and when that happens they can’t exactly indicate, see below! There is therefore no reason to doubt that both parties precisely then (and not before) know what will come down where, just as there is no reason whatsoever to assume that China would want to be secretive about it, let alone on a non-military mission.
But: the stays a large part of course uncontrolled crash! And determine where and when it is precisely According to both parties, NASA and its Chinese counterpart, it is not possible until the scrap begins its descent into the atmosphere, hence the rather broad indication of the expected time of the crash. Experts are talking about 16 of 17 hour margin and that is quite a erg wide margin! Coordinates of the point where the scrap fell into the sea are shown in the different news items indeed mentioned, albeit that the provision is quite rough so that it covers a fairly large area:

According to the CMS, based on monitoring and analysis, debris from the last stage of Long March 5B’s re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere fell into the surrounding sea area located at 119.0 east longitude and 9.1 north latitude around 12:55 a.m. on Sunday, with most of the components burned and destroyed during the re-entry process.

Conclusion on closer inspection: China (in its own words) does share data with the international community, but could not accurately indicate in advance where the debris would fall. With the data they did have, NASA probably couldn’t have stated that better, that’s the big problem with uncontrolled crashes.

The whole commotion must therefore be regarded as either (1) storm in a teacup (data is available, but uncontrolled crashes indeed do not deserve the beauty prize), (2) the umpteenth attempt from the US to blacken ‘rival’ China or (3) justified criticism of China, perhaps not so much for ‘withholding data’ (see above) but simply on the basis of ‘uncontrolled crash’ (although China is and certainly was not the only one who does or did this).
Last week I read the thin but very enlightening, stimulating book of the Singaporean former top ambassador Kishore Mahbubani “Has the West Lost it?” from 2018. It finds that historically, since the beginning of this century, we in the West have been led astray by trying to cope with the new reality of the growing economic and political influence of the rest of the world, led by China. ignore or even frustrate. The somewhat pitiful comment of the teased NASA chief Bill Nelson, which has been surpassed on several points by both Elon Musk and the Chinese, must then be placed under category (2). Personally, I still find it a little sporty, Nelson and his compatriots could work better on better cooperation with the Chinese and the Russians, together you get further than alone and unity makes power. But in the US they have regulations that should frustrate cooperation with China, as the Global Times article mentioned above also points out:

Cooperation between China and the US in the field of space is illegal due to the two restrictive clauses that the US imposed on China, namely the Cox Report and the Wolf Amendment.

“It is against the law in the US for China to report space information to the country . Therefore China has no obligation to disclose any information directly to the US. China has always made its space information available to the international community. Why does the US turn a blind eye to it?” he said.

That last paragraph also clarifies why China no longer shares data directly with the US. Because it is illegal in the US to cooperate with China in space travel. Then the Chinese will not unilaterally share information with NASA…

off-topic: That attitude of the US is not good for NASA, for anyone really. Because NASA is also still financially and technologically competitive in-house by commercial parties such as Elon Musk’s Space X and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Senator Bernie Sanders, head of the Senate budget committee, said both Space X and Blue Origin use NASA as… ATM where everything the commercial cowboys “harvest” from space, such as extremely valuable asteroids with platinum and other precious metals, is for Bezos and Musk and the taxpayer/investor is left empty-handed:

Nasa has identified over 12,000 asteroids within 45m kilometers of Earth that contain iron ore, nickel, precious metals and other minerals. Just a single 3,000ft asteroid may contain platinum worth over $5tn. Another asteroid’s rare earth metals could be worth more than $20tn alone. According to the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, “There are twenty-trillion-dollar checks up there, waiting to be cashed!”
The questions we must ask are: who will be cashing those checks? Who will, overall, be benefiting from space exploration? Will it be a handful of billionaires or will it be the people of our country and all of humanity?

As it stands now, as a result of the 2015 Space Act that passed the Senate with virtually no floor debate, private corporations are able to own all of the resources that they discover in space. In other words, the taxpayers of this country who made it possible for these private enterprises to go into space will get a 0% return on their investment.

That doesn’t seem very good for NASA’s business model, nor is it motivating for the NASA staff who have to make so much knowledge available to Musk and Bezos for free. You can imagine Bill Nelson’s frustrations. Perhaps that explains his somewhat grumpy reaction to the Chinese successes?

PS I just read that Australia has received an unsolicited gift from heaven, most likely a “Souvenir de Elon Musk” :
‘Like an alien obelisk’: space debris found in Snowy Mountains paddock believed to be from SpaceX mission
Note that Bill Nelson on the same twitter account does not provide any commentary, neither positive nor negative, on this uncontrolled Musk waste crash. As an apology to Nelson, I would argue that the source of this scrap was somewhat smaller than a Long March 5B missile, but an uncontrolled crash over land has a much higher risk of accidents and damage to property or injury than over sea. Is there a double standard here or does he just prefer not to mention the name Musk for headache reasons?

edit: link & quote verkort, extra paragraph, memory of Elon Musk
edit 2: uncontrolled crash is difficult to predict and does not deserve the beauty prize, so conclusion adjusted

[Reactie gewijzigd door quadsimodo op 1 augustus 2022 20:30]