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November 4, 2022: Rocketing Through the Night

14 Comments

It seems that Gizmodo is now shilling for SpaceX.

Still, China is choosing to play with people’s lives and property, designing a rocket that, instead of performing a safe and controlled reentry after launch, flies into a rapidly decaying orbit.

14 thoughts on “November 4, 2022: Rocketing Through the Night”

  1. Phillies were oh-so-close last night. Astros made two outstanding defensive plays (leaping catch at the wall; stab of hot smash at first to end it) to preserve the victory.

    1. I haven't watched much baseball this year. I turned it on in the 7th, so those were probably the only 3 innings of baseball I've watched all season.

      I picked pretty good ones

      1. The Eagles faired better than the Phillies. Admittedly the Texans are more on the level of the other Texas baseball team rather than the Astros.

  2. Most rockets re-enter in a controlled manner. The ones that don't are because they escaped Earth's gravity entirely. This is the second time China has simply shrugged about where the rocket will re-enter.

      1. I guess I read "controlled reentry" to mean something much more specific than "hit an ocean".

        Fair enough.

        1. It is. Most items in low-earth orbit are small enough to burn up entirely in the atmosphere. Larger items will make it through to impact the Earth. The upper atmosphere is tenuous but random. We don't know how much it will slow down the object so where it will impact is anywhere along its next tens to hundreds of orbits. That will be most of the Earth. Therefore those objects need a plan to fire their rockets at specific times to definitively re-enter at a specific point so we know it will impact the ocean.

    1. I definitely did not know that. I've never been good enough to come all that close to beating the game, but knowing this, I may need to give it a shot this evening

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