China’s Long March 5 launches classified satellite; core stage liable to crash anywhere on Earth
China today used its most powerful rocket, the Long March 5, to place a classified military satellite into a high orbit, lifting off from its Wenchang coastal spaceport.
Assuming the rocket headed south or east from Wenchang, its strap-on boosters will fall harmlessly in the ocean. However, based on past Long March 5 launches, the core first stage will reach an unstable low orbit, release its upper stage and payload, and then fall back to Earth within a week or so. And it will be large enough to hit the ground. On past launches the rocket’s engines could not be restarted, so there was no way to control where it would crash. Had that core stage on one launch in 2020 come down 15 minutes earlier, it would have crashed in the New York metropolitan area.
Has China upgraded those engines so they can be restarted to put the stage down in a controlled manner over the ocean? We presently have no idea. Stay tuned because we all may face the possibility of this core stage hitting us.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
91 SpaceX
60 China
16 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 104 to 60, and the entire world combined 104 to 94. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 94.
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China today used its most powerful rocket, the Long March 5, to place a classified military satellite into a high orbit, lifting off from its Wenchang coastal spaceport.
Assuming the rocket headed south or east from Wenchang, its strap-on boosters will fall harmlessly in the ocean. However, based on past Long March 5 launches, the core first stage will reach an unstable low orbit, release its upper stage and payload, and then fall back to Earth within a week or so. And it will be large enough to hit the ground. On past launches the rocket’s engines could not be restarted, so there was no way to control where it would crash. Had that core stage on one launch in 2020 come down 15 minutes earlier, it would have crashed in the New York metropolitan area.
Has China upgraded those engines so they can be restarted to put the stage down in a controlled manner over the ocean? We presently have no idea. Stay tuned because we all may face the possibility of this core stage hitting us.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
91 SpaceX
60 China
16 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 104 to 60, and the entire world combined 104 to 94. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 94.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
If this LM5 payload was actually put into a high orbit, we shouldn’t have to worry about another randomly falling giant core stage. To get anything beyond LEO, the LM5 uses a second propulsion stage mounted above the core stage. The core stage, in this sort of ascent profile, doesn’t reach orbital velocity but, like the strap-on boosters, falls predictably into the sea.
The PRC’s problem child is the LM5A, which lacks an upper propulsion stage and uses just the core stage to put large payloads into LEO such as space station modules. The PRC, according to current plans, will be playing core stage roulette with LM5As at least four more times in the next few years as it launches three additional modules to its space station as well as its companion Hubble-class space telescope.
Dick Eagleson: You might be right, but I reserve judgment. Since the Chinese tell us nothing, we need to wait a few days to actually see what happens with that core stage.
Some of those picts ;look like sci-fi book covers from the 50’s