
China's defunct space lab expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere this weekend - randomerr
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/chinas-defunct-space-lab-hurtling-earth-entry-54088824
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qiqing
Excerpt from article towards the end: "China was excluded from the 420-ton
International Space Station mainly due to U.S. legislation barring such
cooperation and concerns over the Chinese space program's strong military
connections. China's space program remains highly secretive and some experts
have complained that a lack of information about Tiangong 1's design has made
it harder to predict what might happen upon its re-entry."

I guess it makes sense that they'd be secretive if someone excluded them from
the club based on concerns that also apply to existing members.

~~~
sametmax
Exactly.

> China was excluded from the 420-ton International Space Station mainly due
> to U.S. legislation barring such cooperation and concerns over the Chinese
> space program's strong military connections.

This is such BS. All our space programs have strong military connections. We
literally created our first spacecrafts from German missile designs.

China will do great without us. They don't need us. They have the money and
the talent now. They already got planes, boats, nuclear plants and bombs,
satellites...

So the only thing this achieves is decreasing trust and cooperation among
powerful countries in the world, and duplicate efforts and resource spendings.
We managed to cooperate with Russia. We should try to do the same with China.

I'm going back to listen again to the audio book of "The Martian", at least it
will makes me smile and in there, Chinese and American scientists bypass
politics to help each others.

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sethammons
One potential bright side: perhaps China is avoiding dogmatic group think and
innovating in ways that have not occurred to the rest of the space community
and one day, we might be able to fold their unique insights into our own.
Probably not. But maybe.

~~~
sametmax
They do have an entire different way of doing things, and also different views
on ethics and environmental issues.

This can be good and bad, but it will definitely be different.

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rqs
Well, I hope AVIC do some serious investigation on this, because there is
another station (Tiangong-2) up there, it could be really bad if it had the
same problem cause such defunct.

In fact, I also hope they go one step further, publish the result of their
investigation and explain it to the public.

As a person who grew up watching a lot's of (pirated) Discovery shows (on
provincial TV channel, LOL), I always found people who trying to research
something in order to discover the truth are fascinating and made me a big fan
of science (despite I did really bad at school).

If scientists in China did figured out and learned what went wrong, they may
as well notify the public, it could be very educational maybe even inspiring.

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maze-le
As far as I know Tiangong-1 was never planned to orbit for long. As its the
first chinese orbital station, its mission was to test deployment and orbital
docking capabilities. And that was accomplished. There was a malfunction, in
the sense that the station did lose its communication and control
capabilities, but it was clear that the station would deorbit sooner or later.
Stations on low earth orbit still need fuel to maintain altitude, because
earths gravity and friction in the high atmosphere tend to pull it earthwards
slowly. Cut the fuel supply and the station deorbits inevitably. Same thing
happened with Skylab and Mir btw. -- with the exception that the deorbiting
procedure was a planned and controlled event.

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sduclos
btw no one know how to deorbit ISS

~~~
xenophonf
That’s simply untrue:

[https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/578543main_asap_eol_plan_2010_10102...](https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/578543main_asap_eol_plan_2010_101020.pdf)

[https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/08/bringing-down-iss-
pl...](https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/08/bringing-down-iss-plans-
stations-demise-updated/)

[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/199600...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19960053133.pdf)

[https://standards.nasa.gov/standard/nasa/nasa-
std-871914](https://standards.nasa.gov/standard/nasa/nasa-std-871914)

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sduclos
yep .. but not controlled (as parent implied) .. simply because there is so
many variable and the mass is enormous. Standard model can't handle that. I'm
just summing a section dedicated to that in Science & Vie [No 1175], august
2015.

We know how to start the process, but the disintegration of so many heavy part
is intractable .. some part will touch ground, but we can't tell where with
certainty.

Nice pdf.

edit: years

