Out of Control Chinese Rocket Threatens to Scatter Debris Over Populated Area
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Until the advent of the reusable Falcon 9, most first stages of rockets fell into the ocean, on the lightly populated steppes of Kazakhstan (Russian launches from Baikonur), or crashed beside and even into rural villages, throwing up huge clouds of toxic propellants in the process (Chinese launches).
All that was before China developed a massive new rocket, Long March 5B, that places the entire first stage into orbit. The booster used to launch the Tianhe core of the country’s first permanent space station on April 29 is still up there, tumbling out of control as it moves ever closer to reentering Earth’s atmosphere over God knows where. If China tried to deorbit the thing, the attempt clearly failed.
The Aerospace Corporation is predicting the stage will reenter over the Pacific Ocean on May 9. That estimate is accurate to only plus or minus 41 hours. Given the uncertainty and the fact the booster is traveling at about 17,500 mph, it could come down pretty much anywhere.
The Aerospace Corporation’s web page does have feature that lets you see what time it will be where you live when the stage reenters. It will be a lot more useful later on when estimate for stage reentry becomes more refined.
Long March 5B is part of China’s most powerful rocket family, roughly equivalent to the Delta-IV Heavy. The booster differs from the Long March 5B in that it doesn’t use a second stage.
The rocket has the potential to spread debris over a wide area. It will most likely fall over the ocean, which is about 70 percent of the planet. But, you can never be entirely sure of these things. So keep watching the skies.
A much smaller Falcon 9 second stage reentered recently over Washington and Oregon. There were no injuries, but a helium pressure vessel was recovered intact from a farm.
6 responses to “Out of Control Chinese Rocket Threatens to Scatter Debris Over Populated Area”
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“Until the advent of the reusable Falcon 9,-“
And after the “advent” of plastic milk jugs we started throwing them in the trash instead of reusing glass bottles at great expense. Even Philip Bono, the father of VTVL, understood that only so much reuse was practical and incorporated some expendable tanks in his designs.
Not that reusability is a bad thing…unless it is a P.R. device and a deception. Even as a deception it is accomplishing some progress towards breaking even I suppose. But only spacex really knows. Everything is “expended” eventually….what you are accomplishing has meaning.
One of the problems with Apollo was the mighty 3000 ton Saturn V lifting off and around ten days later a 6 ton capsule parachuting into the ocean while the rest of it was expended. This did not sit well with the taxpayer and NASA never made any serious attempt to explain why this had to happen. Why didn’t it all come back like in Rocky Jones space ranger?
The ignorance of the public concerning this has been exploited with the NewSpace cheap and nasty ideology. The reality was a rocket engine IS a controlled explosion and after very many minutes of that controlled explosion it was not to be trusted to keep being controlled for very much longer. Due to the physics involved with escaping our deep gravity well, and the energy available from chemical propellants, staging is required. By making these eggshell thin containers pushed by controlled explosion capable of returning for reuse it made everything so heavy that not much would make it into orbit. No shiny Rocky Jones spaceships.
A half a century later, with far better quality control and slightly better materials, they seem to be landing back the first stage of the falcon 9 and reusing it to great economic benefit. Except spacex is not willing to prove this is actually happening. Even if it is “only breaking even” then dropping spent stages in the ocean still has advantages over reuse in that it eliminates much of the thrice-damned standing army and makes those trained people available for other work.
Maybe they should consider expending tanks and recovering engines vs shiny starships.
Congratulations on being the last man to still try peddling the nonsensical idea that SpaceX is saving no money by reusing its rockets – and payload fairings. The Falcon 9 is, pretty obviously, not “eggshell thin.” They’re pretty damned sturdy, in fact.
And you again invoke the entirely fictional “standing army” of SpaceX refurbishers. The Shuttle required such a standing army. The Falcons get by with, at most, a standing squad or two.
It’s not enough to dump stages on downrange Chinese villagers, now the CCP is dumping 5 x 33 meter stages on everyone else too. Lovely ?
Yep. Charming people. And we’ll be ducking at least two more of these giant metal eggrolls in the coming year or so after the other two major modules of this station go up.
Technically, that is the low-thrust sustainer stage of the CZ-5B. The four high-thrust boosters drop off before orbit.
SLS delenda est
Ooff! That’s clumsy and confusing. I see what you meant though. What you should have written is…
‘The Long March 5B is part of China’s most powerful rocket family, roughly equivalent to the Delta-IV Heavy. The Long March 5B differs from the Long March 5 in that it doesn’t use a second stage.’
SLS delenda est