½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

Thank gawd you posted this - I checked and it's going to miss my house. I'm relieved.

Hang on a mo .... I wonder if the Chinese are able to divert the thing so it hits my old maths teacher's house, preferably whilst the daft cow is having supper.

Dear President whoever,
I will be happy to slip a few quid into your back pocket if you can arrange it
Fred

I wonder how much a lump of rocket would be worth. I assume, if it landed in your garden, it would be yours to sell as you wished. People pay large sacks of cash for all sorts of rubbish, so it could be a nice little retirement fund for someone.

That sounds good! Although I don't think there's anywhere in my garden it could land without causing massive damage  -  and probably turning wifey, dog and myself into pulp in the process... 

Mr Pontus wrote:

and probably turning wifey, dog and myself into pulp in the process... 

I like dogs but I don't have one so I hope it lands on my house .... when I'm out with the kids.

Sending into space this kind of rocket, a Long March 5B (launched April 29th), is not a first for China.

Last year a 5B launched and also re-entered, causing damage to some villages in Ivory Coast (Africa), according to an astronomer at Harvard.

He said metal pieces from that incident were strewn over about a 100-mile span.

Source .. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell,
                  interviewed this week by the CBC

Flash!

China has just announced that its "out of control" rocket has landed in the Indian Ocean.

  -- Sky News of Australia

cccmedia wrote:

Where will the 10-story terror come to Earth this weekend?... Will it plunge harmlessly into the Indian Ocean, hundreds of kilometers East of the Mascarene Islands?

Well, that was semi-prescient, eh?  Seeing how the thing did plunge into the Indian Ocean.

It wasn't anywhere near the Mascarene Islands, though it did go down near another famous island group, the Maldives, according to initial reports.

cccmedia

Britain's BBC News has just posted a report.

According to that report, China's news agency has stated that most of the space rocket disintegrated as the rocket re-entered Earth's atmosphere over the Arabian Peninsula.

Some of the debris is confirmed to have landed in the Indian Ocean, North and West of the Maldives.

The Maldives were a British protectorate from 1887 until 1965 .. and then became a presidential republic, according to The Maldives page of Wikipedia.  The small country is located several hundred miles South Southwest of India's southernmost tip.

cccmedia

72.47° East 2.65° North

The world's populated areas 'dodged the bullet' this time, but this is not over.

China is vying to become a space superpower to rival the USA and Russia.

Another eight launch/missions are planned so that China may construct its own space station.

Source...

70% of the earth's surface is ocean, where debris can land without doing any damage (to people).
Of the remaining 30%, wide areas are uninhabited and two thirds are poor countries, where the rich world never cares about the maximum few hundred deaths a falling rocket can cause (if it lands in a densely populated town).
So why the sensationalist media coverage?
It sells - that's the only reason.
But in fact, there are far more important issues to read and worry about!

There's also the debate about how China is going about its space efforts.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said that China was negligent in allowing the unmanned rocket to fall out of orbit and re-enter the atmosphere.

For over 40 years, since NASA's Skylab crash into Western Australia and across the Indian Ocean, space powers have avoided allowing potentially-harmful, uncontrolled re-entries of space vehicles.

cccmedia

cccmedia wrote:

Source...

Suggestion - Never believe a word printed in that crappy rag until you can verify it from a quality news outlet that doesn't make up any old rubbish they fancy