Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Infrastructure week. at last.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Second rate reporter says what?

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Let’s finish the job.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

The words do not have to be perfect.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Breaking News Open Thread: The Chinese Space Station Has Crashed “Safely”

Breaking News Open Thread: The Chinese Space Station Has Crashed “Safely”

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Another April Fools Day prank failed!

A Chinese space station the size of a school bus re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at about 5:16 p.m. Pacific time on Sunday, scattering its remaining pieces over the southern Pacific Ocean, according to the United States’ Joint Force Space Component Command.

The demise of the station, Tiangong-1, became apparent when radar stations no longer detected it passing overhead. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries; the likelihood that pieces would land on someone was small, but not zero.

The station may have landed northwest of Tahiti, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said on Twitter. That location is north of the Spacecraft Cemetery, an isolated region in the Pacific Ocean where space debris has frequently landed…

Okay, the jokes were irresistable — imagine the story some ‘lucky’ individual would’ve had to tell if they became the second person in history known to have been hit by falling space garbage. But then, as the Washington Post pointed out, “It’s not supposed to happen like this”:

… There are no laws that govern the movement of objects in space, says Holger Krag, the head of the Space Debris Office at the European Space Agency. The only international law that applies to space objects is the Liability Convention, which was reached by the U.N. General Assembly in 1971. It says that when something falls out of space and lands on the ground, the country where that object originated is absolutely liable for any damage it causes.

So far, an international space crisis has been avoided because of the good relationship between all of the space nations, including the United States, Russia, Europe and China, to name a few. Plus it helps that 71 percent of Earth is covered in water.

“That’s 71 percent odds that it’s going to go in the drink,” Harrington said. “We’ve been fortunate.”…

Reader Interactions

71Comments

  2. 2.

    Steve in the ATL

    Can we have another tedious thread speculating over what a relative nobody might write one day?

  5. 5.

    Cheryl Rofer

    The Kosmos 954 satellite, with its nuclear reactor, crashed into Canada in 1977.

    The USSR remained tight-lipped throughout the crisis, but eventually confirmed the loss of Kosmos 954 and its on-board nuclear reactor. The Soviet Union assured the world that the falling spacecraft would burn up during re-entry. The U.S. took no chances and stood up a whole-of-government response.

    The NSC brought together liaisons and experts from State, Defense, the CIA and the Department of Energy (DOE). DOE ran much of the search and processing through its Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST. A quiet competence and a lively sense of humor helped the people involved achieve its goals under conditions as tough as the Martian desert. A solid working relationship between the Canadian and American teams also bolstered the effort. A computer contributed the operation’s code name: MORNING LIGHT.

    The nuclear emergency response system got its first real-world test—a tougher, more dangerous test than any drill. Kosmos 954’s reactor core contained over 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium, formed into carbide BBs and encased in carbon disks like hockey pucks. Kosmos 954 ran its reactor for over for four months, generating fission products like plutonium, cesium and strontium. Should one of these fuel pucks arrive intact on Earth, its lethal radiation could kill from up to 1,000 feet away.

    A glance at a map explained the fuss. Ground plots of the falling satellite’s decaying orbit, made unpredictable by its breaking up and eroding, suggested two passes over the United States, including a terrifying footprint stretching from Tucson to Chicago. But those orbits also passed over most of the Earth’s surface. That made planning difficult.

  10. 10.

    Viva BrisVegas

    How about the Northern Hemisphere stop littering our hemisphere.

    The Southern Hemisphere just wishes we could afford to move to a more upmarket neighbourhood. Where next door doesn’t keep dumping trash over the equator.

    If this keeps on, we’ll have to have words with the local council.

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    If one could somehow gather up all the small hailstone-like pieces of the school bus size object that survived to splash down in a swath one might – might – be able to use them to cobble together something bicycle sized. Physics be physics.

  16. 16.

    mike in dc

    Oh, sure, the remnants of the satellite land “harmlessly”…right up until the first documented zombie attacks*.

    *(e,g., Shaun of the Dead)

  21. 21.

    smintheus

    In ’79 there was a hilarious media circus surrounding the imminent destruction of Skylab, which promised to fall on every one of our heads. It was almost as big a thing as ABC’s Battle of the Network Stars, except it was real.

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    The point is that the danger is tiny and blown all out of proportion by the mass media. Yes, people have been killed by hailstones, statistically it will occur but the probability in any given storm is smaller than small.

  24. 24.

    Mnemosyne

    @zhena gogolia:

    I’m a little annoyed by all of the commercial interruptions here on the West Coast, but the actual performance is great.

    And I’m glad that producers learned the right lessons from Hamilton and went for a very diverse cast.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    In a happy place right now because hooray for the finally-got-one stand mixer. Decided to bake a type of loaf cake I like but rarely make. Rarely because it involves a very thick batter and after using a handheld mixer the wrist, arm and shoulder feel as if I’d pitched a double header, using a shot put in place of a baseball.

  28. 28.

    Eljai

    @smintheus: I am old enough to remember that. I weighed the chances of Skylab hitting my attic bedroom in my mom and dad’s house in the Midwest. I determined that there was no need to move myself and the cat to the basement.

  29. 29.

    smike

    @NotMax: Like the lottery, the game keeps going until the next “winner” is selected. Then, though the odds stay the same, the game begins again, ad infinitum.

  30. 30.

    Marshall

    There are no laws that govern the movement of objects in space, says Holger Krag, the head of the Space Debris Office at the European Space Agency.

    Mr. Krag, you have a call from Isaac Newton on line 1 and from Albert Einstein on line 2.

  31. 31.

    Yarrow

    @lamh36: @zhena gogolia: LOVED Jesus Christ Superstar. Haven’t seen it in ages and the last time I did it was a community theater type performance where someone I knew had a minor role. This production was amazing. Loved the set and staging and the performances were great.

  34. 34.

    Inventor

    @smintheus: Being collegians, I and my friends naturally threw a Skylab Party complete with little telescopes and hardhats to go with the Re-Entry Punch and Skyshots ™.

  35. 35.

    terben

    @Viva BrisVegas: When Skylab came down in 1979, some debris landed in Western Australia near Esperance. The local Park Service issued a $400 fine to NASA, which went unpaid for 30 years. In 1979, California radio DJ Scott Barley collected contributions from listeners and pain the fine, which had been written off years before.

  37. 37.

    Yutsano

    @Yarrow: Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Jesus Christ Superstar get Andrew Lloyd Webber excommunicated from the Anglican church?

  38. 38.

    Yutsano

    @Amir Khalid: I may be the only person to find this ironic or even interesting, but the brand of foil they’re using is Korean. I didn’t think Korea had a lot of bauxite.

  39. 39.

    Amir Khalid

    @Yutsano:
    It’s not mentioned in his Wikipedia entry, if it did happen. I didn’t know the Anglicans went in for that excommunication stuff.

  40. 40.

    Yarrow

    @Yutsano: I don’t know. I do know that many churches found it blasphemous when it first came out. I don’t know if that’s still the case now.

  41. 41.

    ruemara

    @smintheus: The Battle of the Network Stars was more of a disaster, tho

    @Yarrow: I think that is still so. But I don’t see it that way at all. Modern, but not blasphemous.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    @Yarrow

    Trivia: The F.B.I. requested Nixon not go to the gala premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass at the Kennedy Center because the Latin used during the mass “might contain coded” anti-war or anti-establishment sentiments. He did not attend.

  44. 44.

    ruemara

    I’m particularly proud of tonight’s fooding. I made a very light version of a small cheesecake, but I used up my phyllo dough stash and covered it in a homemade blueberry filling.

    I also made all this stuff. Spatchcocked chicken roast, roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes and purple sweet potatoes, golden beet, purple daikon & cucumber slaw, garlic mashed cauliflower, butter & lemon asparagus with blue cheese, and a savoury pot pie of jackfruit in an english beer sauce with … a boatload of other vegetables.

    I feel ridiculously fat but I shan’t have to cook for a few days.

  45. 45.

    Mnemosyne

    @ruemara:

    There are some people who think that any modernizing or updating of the story is by definition blasphemous. ?

    And from a writing POV, I loved where Webber chose to begin it — with Jesus already wildly successful and Judas resentful of it.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    @ruemara

    Phew! That’s a cooknado.

    I feel ridiculously fat

    pace Monty Python: “Surely you wouldn’t refuse a thin, thin after dinner mint.”

    :)

  49. 49.

    Cckids

    @ruemara:

    I think that is still so. But I don’t see it that way at all. Modern, but not blasphemous.

    That’s what I’ve always thought as well. It’s a very loving look at JC as a man. Which is what the haters don’t approve of

    Maybe 8-10 years back, American Idol did an Andrew Lloyd Weber night, and one of the contestants sang the JCS title song, very well. She got voted off the next week, mostly because she sang “ that sacrilegious song”.

    Wingnuts are crazy.

  50. 50.

    SRW1

    There are no laws that govern the movement of objects in space …

    It’s as if Newton’s apple fell all in vain.

  51. 51.

    ruemara

    @NotMax: A micron more of food and I burst. Housemate came back from a day of filming, crashed until dinner, put away his lucky strike of inheriting all the leftovers (I eat paleo & all lean during the week, so he gets pies, chicken, taters & salad) & has already gone to bed. This meal is the healthiest itis delivery system ever.

  56. 56.

    Mike J

    @ruemara: I thought I was going to be prep cook today for mom. Did all the chopping and mandolining and measuring, made the glaze for the ham, then 5 minutes until dinner I was told I was making Hollandaise for the asparagus.

    Now I need biscuits for ham and biscuit breakfast.

  59. 59.

    AnotherBruce

    A couple of things that I hate about the internet:
    “You wont believe what she looks like now.” Yes I will believe it, you craven simpleton. She has aged, and so have I. You know what? She’s still a beauty. And I’m hopelessly in love with older women.
    And probiotics, fucking probiotics. I get the feeling that a lot of the ads don’t know shit about probiotics. I figure if you have an appetite and can leave a shit, you should ignore probiotics. In other words,this is the latest ill prescribed health craze.

  63. 63.

    scav

    @NotMax: I am hovering between being puzzled that the FBI was seemingly baffled when faced with a script in “coded” Latin, OR, being so very frightened that a singer might feel inspired to go off-script — in Latin and presumably in tempo as well because of the orchestra — and that that off-script Latin coded message would be instantly understood by an audience at Kennedy Center and would thereby instant transform the same begala-ed elite into somethink akin to the weathermen.

    Males about as much sense as many librettos actually, amd the costumes would be stunning.

  65. 65.

    scav

    @Ninedragonspot: Thanks, but I think I’m going to savor my mental scripting for a bit longer. I’m so enjoying the FBI choir and the revolutionary cell in tiaras. Reality can impinge later.

    Codebreakers doing a declension chorus! I may be lapsing into Gilbert & Sullivan and I was rather hoping for a more an operetta.

  66. 66.

    cosima

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I’m going to take the girls on a photo adventure when our oldest comes home in May. This guy does 4×4 trips up into the hills for landscape & wildlife photography instruction. http://stevenrennie.co.uk/landscape. He works for/with an estate not far from us (most of the landscape photos are within an hours’ drive of us). I’m going to do some practising before then, and get myself a better zoom lens. If anyone has a suggestion for a zoom for an Olympus ELP1, I’d welcome it/them.

    When the news first came out about the spy poisoning here my first response was that Putin had overplayed his hand or bungled badly. Given his history, overplayed had to be the assumption. As soon as the OFC started squatting in the WH I said the west would have to align against him, as he was so clearly taking steps (withdrawing from Human Rights council, climate agreement, TPP, etc) that undermined Europe and supported Putin’s attempts to divide democratic countries. Anyway, here we are, and someone on the US side of the pond has finally got the memo: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/putin-miscalculates-and-unites-the-west/ar-AAvmx7h?li=AAmiR2Z&ocid=spartandhp.

  68. 68.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @cosima: That photographer does some nice work, he’s got good subject mater to work with. Amazon can be a good resource to check out lens for various mounts and see reviews. I shoot with Samsung cameras so I don’t have much current(my first “real” camera was an OM-1) experience with Olympus.

  70. 70.

    Skepticat

    There’s a great site to track falling space debris (www.satview.org), so I was keeping a careful eye on this, as the path often came right over this area. In October, a friend’s house being built on the next island was hit by either a meteorite (it was during period with a meteor shower) or a piece of space junk. It was about the size of a golf ball, still red hot, and it came through the roof less than a foot from one of the carpenters.

  71. 71.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    I think I recall the Anglicans getting into excommunication of ministers who were willing to wed same-sex couples, back when that was terrifying RMNJs and homophobes. That thankfully went away quite a while ago.

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