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First stage of Chinese rocket crashes in Chinese city

Remains of Long March 2C, in Chinese city

Locals in the city of Shangluo, population over two million located in central China, today released video images of the remains of the first stage of a Long March 2C rocket that launched yesterday and apparently crashed in the city.

The image to the right is a screen capture. Since this two-stage rocket uses extremely toxic hypergolic fuels in both of its stages, those citizens wandering around the rocket’s remains are in great health danger.

China has in recent years has appeared taken actions to block the release of such videos by its citizens, but apparently failed in this case.

The irony is that this rocket supposedly launched what China called “a disaster reduction” satellite. That maybe so, but in the process it also dumped toxic materials on its own citizens.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

10 comments

  • Milt

    Robert, Robert, Robert. You are quibbling about a few toxic chemicals from a spent Chinese Long March booster — a small price to pay for the Chinese conquest of space*. Meanwhile, here at home, the heroic comrades at the EPA are working diligently to protect the American public form the ghastly environmental horrors that Elon Musk and SpaceX might unleash from its Boca Chica test site.

    *Remember, for communists, dead people aren’t a “bug,” they’re a *feature*.

    Rest assured, Comrade Joe (Biden) is watching over us.

  • Jeff Wright

    The Chinese look at space with pride.

    I wish more people here did

  • Andi

    Minor edit in third paragraph: “China has in recent years appeared to have taken actions”

  • Max

    With pride? Perhaps. They also see it as opportunity, holding the Highground, and knowing that everyone in space is on a level playing ground with each other… Which also means the most ruthless competitor will win.
    This picture is yet another example of who could be the most ruthless.
    If somebody else establishes a base first? They’ll send an infiltration team to take it without an escape plan knowing that if they fail, they die.
    Didn’t the Chinese declare with pride that the moon is the PLA‘s personal property? You know they don’t like to lose face… You will not shame the empire!

    “More people here” do have “pride” hoping in what could be in mankind‘s Future. (Optimus) Science writers have been pondering for three generations now.
    Will it be military like the Chinese and Russians? Or will it be corporations like Europe and America? Will it be a race in a cold war like the industrial military complex? or will it be no space at all proposed by the save the earth “death cult” Global warming WEF?
    If it wasn’t for the current establishment and the Nazi socialist Marxist infiltration that’s preventing and hobbling our space efforts with regulation and paperwork, you would’ve had an opportunity to live on the moon probably 20 years ago.

    I have a picture in my head from the movie Astra with Brad Pitt. Where he’s being transported by rover across the lunar surface, and a competitor flanks them and begins shooting, picking them off. Trailer with a brief glimpse of the action.
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2935510/

    Not the future I want, not the reality I wanted for my grandchildren that were living now. No matter how civilized we become, it seems “human nature” has a way of promoting the most evil among us, the most ruthless to the top. Power attracts the corruptible. The sociopaths are running things now.

  • pawn

    What part of the rocket is that? Seems to have a “T” shape.

    Probably cut up overnight and in a bunch of wagons on the way to Uncle Wang’s backyard smelter and battery recycling plant.

  • TallDave

    small correction: China doesn’t have citizens

    it has Party and prole

    you can safely those are proles since they aren’t seizing the camera

  • Bruce Hayden

    It’s really not that hard for China to have found a place to launch rockets that wouldn’t land on their cities, if they failed. Geographically, it has huge open spaces, and a long east coast, so could have done what we do, launching east over the ocean for putting payloads into orbit.

  • David Eastman

    Pawn- I thought it was T shaped at first and even went so far as to look up the LM2C to see where it could come from. But that’s just the angle of the photo, if you actually watch the video you can see that it’s not a T shape, its actually two separate sections of the fuselage.

  • Allan

    That helps, David. Now I can see it’s two sections. It looks like stove pipe fitted togethor with crimped ends.

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