Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

The willow is too close to the house.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

I was promised a recession.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Bark louder, little dog.

Let’s finish the job.

You are here: Home / Politics / Live Blogging / What Goes Up…

What Goes Up…

by | 40 Comments

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Satellite watchers are counting down. A 23-ton Chinese Long March rocket has been circling (ellipsing, actually) down and should re-enter the atmosphere any time now. Here’s a list of sites and people to follow who will be following the rocket’s trajectory.

The orbit has been erratic as it dips toward the atmosphere, so its exact entry and ultimate end can’t be predicted. It passed over Australia a few minutes ago, or should have if it didn’t disintegrate into the sea before that.

It will most likely fall into the sea, since that’s 70% of the earth’s surface. WordPress won’t let embed a tracker, but here’s Jonathan McDowell’s latest tweet. He makes a practice of tracking space junk.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  5. 5.

    Mary G

    If it could just get to Florida and land on a certain golf course, with SS agents able to run to safety…

  6. 6.

    Ken

    My God, the comments on that YouTube tracker.  Or maybe I shouldn’t invoke God – of the ones I could read, a horribly large proportion seem to be asking God to drop the rocket on <insert country here>.

  7. 7.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ken: I remember when Skylab came down.  I was a high school freshman, visiting India with my family.  I remember reading in the newspapers of many, many peasants praying for it to come down on their house, so the US government would pay them compensation.  In the end, it came down in the Australian outback.

  8. 8.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Chetan Murthy: 

    There’s a number of one-kangaroo towns in Australia with a museum-shack displaying bits of the Skylab space station that were found locally after the Great Skyfall. It resulted in a widespread footprint of parts and impacts after it disintegrated high up.

  9. 9.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chetan Murthy:

     I remember reading in the newspapers of many, many peasants praying for it to come down on their house, so the US government would pay them compensation.  In the end, it came down in the Australian outback.

    I don’t think they’d have needed to worry about being compensated by the US government if a large space station reentering the atmosphere slammed into their home. Or about much of anything else ever again lol. Assuming they were home at the tim

    ETA: then again, it didn’t come down in one piece if IIRC, so maybe not

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    From the map in this Tweet,

    UPDATE Our latest prediction for #LongMarch5B CZ-5B rocket body reentry is ? 09 MAY 2021 03:02 UTC ± 2 hours along the ground track shown here. 1/ pic.twitter.com/JeIKVUd1fk— The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) May 8, 2021

    looks like Mexico central Florida have some risk of being hit by the thing, but most likely scenario is harmlessly hitting the Pacific.

  13. 13.

    opiejeanne

    @Chetan Murthy:  The very young son of some church friends of my parents was absolutely terrified that Skylab would fall on his house.

    I was trying to remember if it was the kid who grew up to be an astronaut, but no. That kid was 19 when Skylab fell, but that would have made a great story.

  14. 14.

    CaseyL

    One of the linked stories noted that the rocket will break apart on re-entry and fall in pieces, but didn’t say how big the pieces were likely to be – or how widespread.

    Skylab was three times the weight (~90 tons vs. 23), so I don’t expect there to be much of a show.  I realize “not much of a show” is very relative – if even a tiny 500-lb piece falls on someone, it will be their last show ever.

  15. 15.

    Robert Sneddon

    @CaseyL: Skylab had things like a lead-lined safe to keep camera film in and various other structural parts which were big and dense like the airlocks. Some of the other bits that made it to ground in recognisable pieces were pressurised gas tanks and the like. They didn’t hit the ground that hard, maybe 200kph or a bit more.

     

    The Long March 5B core stage is a cryogenic fuelled booster (LOX/LH2), mostly large thin-walled tanks, plumbing and support structures, built light to save weight. The big dense lumps that will hit the ground/water hard at speed will be the engines if they separate from the main structures.

  16. 16.

    Cameron

    Can’t they just shoot this sucker down with one of those Jewish space lasers?

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    Yet another tracker site:

    Latest TIP (as of 2021-05-09 0000Z) for CZ-5B (#LongMarch5B) (48275 / 2021-035B) shows projected re-entry at 2021-05-09 0211(UTC) +/- 60 minutes at latitude 35.9, longitude 24.4 (Mediterranean Basin)

    At 7.8 km/s, just 1 minute diff in the time of reentry =470 km diff in final loc

    — Space-Track (@SpaceTrackOrg) May 9, 2021

    It’s now 0233 UTC, so about 23-24 hours or so to go. (Unless I’ve made a mistake!)

    [eta:] Which of course I did.  It’s 5/9/2021 0238 UTC now…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  20. 20.

    Cheryl Rofer

  21. 21.

    Fair Economist

    @Another Scott: It’s already the 9th UTC time so that prediction missed.

    Reports aren’t going to be good for the Australian flyover because it’s day there – hard to see the rocket.

  24. 24.

    Another Scott

    @Fair Economist: Yeah, I got the day wrong.  Thanks.

    They have +/-1 hour error bars, so they still have about 30 minutes to be “right”.

    Given all the unknowns, it’s amazing they can be that close, really.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  25. 25.

    Fair Economist

    @Matt McIrvin: Quite possibly, and apparently Wellington was socked in leaving no observations possible until Mexico, so most likely we’ll never see anything else.

  27. 27.

    Another Scott

    Spoke with the team. We have indications the ? is down. Once they get radar confirmation of nothing in orbit (after 0300UTC) they will release the final message with time. Y’all can stop hiding in your bunkers. @SpaceTrackOrg

    — MotherOfAllLaunches (@Skitt0608) May 9, 2021

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    Cheryl Rofer

  30. 30.

    Another Scott

    Peaceful Chinese space exploration rocket shot down on orders of United States Warlord Joseph Biden.

    — DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) May 8, 2021

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    NotMax

    Of course it comes down on the Sabbath, when the Jewish Space Lasers are turned off.

  39. 39.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Space Balls Command has this in the palm of their hands

  40. 40.

    LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess)

    @Chetan Murthy: I was a college freshman, with my first full-time job that summer at a newspaper. The reporters had a pool going as to where and when Skylab would land; I think they even printed up T-shirts. (And yeah, now I’m thinking about privilege…)

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