The talk about the reentering Van Allen Probe A last night reminded me of things I've posted about several times over the years, the big one that the Chinese have dropped boosters onto populated areas for years.
This example is from a post dated November 27, 2019 and the Tweet here is dated the 23rd.
I hesitate to start with this example because while I believe they still drop boosters with minimal effort to protect the people on the ground, I know that China is working seriously on reusable boosters now. Several recent articles have focused on test flights of reusable boosters. We did stories about them testing reusable boosters just one month ago, a little over a month before that, and so on (second story in a roundup). Still, while there are still US launch companies that don't reuse boosters they don't knowingly drop them on populated areas.
A big difference is that boosters weigh considerably more than more typical satellites and can cause much more damage. China launched four heavy-lift Long March 5B rockets between 2020 and 2022, and let their approximately 24 ton core stages fall back to Earth. The NASA requirements for public safety from re-entering spacecraft were published in early 1996, and require better than a 1 in 10,000 probability assessment, obviously a smaller chance than the "approximately 1 in 4,200" chance this Probe A was evaluated at.
“Due to late-stage design changes, the potential risk of uncontrolled reentry increased,” a NASA spokesperson told Ars. “After taking into account the mission’s scientific benefits and the low risk of harm to anyone on Earth, NASA granted a waiver to address the non-compliance with the US Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices. Consistent with national policy, NASA notified the US Department of State about the exception.”
Is there anything that screams "big gubmint" more than exempting your own projects (like this NASA satellite) from requirements everyone else is expected to meet?
All the sources I've read yesterday and today repeat that no one has been injured by reentering satellites. That said, it seems the same can't be said about things falling from the sky. I ran across this photo around 2017, and vividly recalled seeing this picture in a magazine while in the waiting room at my dentist. That would have been somewhere around 1966 to maybe '68. Note that the picture itself is dated 1954. Also, where it says, "Ann Hodges, after she became the only person in history to have been struck by a meteorite," that sentence should end with "that we know of."
That's a bruise!
ReplyDeleteThe only reason the ChiComs are getting into reuseable boosters is due to cost. If their boosters were cheaper to just throw away they'd keep doing it, damn how many people get flattened and poisoned. And the nice thing is that by dropping them on land the boosters are recyclable...
ReplyDeleteAs to the woman who survived, you are correct. "That we know of." Of course we also don't know how many places have been hit by cometary bodies or such, like Sodom and Gomorrah or Tunguska. Stuff falls, proving gravity works.