Half the world warned 'Chinese space station will fall on you' If you read the New Zealand Herald, you're (a) probably a Kiwi, and (b) building a bunker because you expect a Chinese space station to drop on your head. Or you could be a Newsweek reader, in which case you're digging bunkers because it's going to drop on your head, not some Kiwi's. If you're in Western Australia, you're …
I was going to say, flippantly, that since the history books tell us that Vitalstatistix lived between 100BCE and 0CE, the eminent Gaul wins this battle. Then, unwisely and uncharacteristically, I did a very minor bit of research and discovered that variants of the Chicken Licken story go back 25 centuries.
So perhaps Vitalstatistix hasn’t roasted and stuffed the bird after all.
For some reason this has reminded me of an occasion in the early 90s, leaving the arena of a music festival in a several thousand strong throng of revellers in various states of intoxication. One particularly inebriated young chap suddenly decided to serenade a WPC with the unforgettable verse:
All my life I've been lickin'
Your fanny lips cause they taste like chicken
Oh boy
Ahh.... what a time to be alive that was... nostalgia sure ain't what it used to be... etc, etc.
It's not just the NZ Herald, there was also some American rag (edit: I guess it was probably Newsweek) claiming that it was going to "land" on them. And no doubt several others that I didn't see.
Its orbital inclination is 42.75°. A lot of the world's population lives between 42.75°N and 42.75°S, so there should be plenty of "please let it fall on us!" articles from everywhere.
Thank you once again Reg for not being idiots about it, like "everyone else."
No you cant sell it, it still is owned by the Chinese govt. However, under international treaties (and we know how much China loves treaties). The country that launches an object into space, and the country it is launched from are responsible for any damages caused so you can sue China for any damage it causes.
So that fine chunking pumpkin or award winning roses that gets smashed to bits you can try and collect.
Hit the US?
Where are all those AEGIS missiles when you actually need them? Oh forgot, they are just for show and pork transfusions.
The only way to minimize the chance of a large chunk landing on someone's head is to whack it right now. It is under the altitude of all satellites so disintegrating it will only do good at this point.
"The only way to minimize the chance of a large chunk landing on someone's head is to whack it right now. It is under the altitude of all satellites so disintegrating it will only do good at this point."
Yes! The best thing to do to avoid a big piece of metal hitting people is to blow it up, so that lots of smaller pieces of metal can hit them instead.
Good thinking batman! Trump has a job for you.
Easy solution - hit it over the ocean (ship-borne missile or as it is entering the ocean. For each resulting piece, surface area:mass ratio massively increases, the deceleration due to air resistance becomes a major factor and it falls out of the sky in the safest area possible.
If used as a missile test, then it wouldn't even cost as much as you might think (means you don't need to do separate test launches - assuming that one would be needed at some point)
> Yes! The best thing to do to avoid a big piece of metal hitting people is to blow it up, so that lots of smaller pieces of metal can hit them instead.
The theory is: Small bits are likely to be vaporized by the heat of re-entry, and/or slow down more since they have a big area-to-mass ratio. Big bits of metal might survive re-entry, with just the outer layer melted off, and can hit at high speed since they have a small area-to-mass ratio.
However, I'm not sure about this cunning plan...
so that lots of smaller pieces of metal can hit them instead.
The smaller pieces at that speed will simply burn up in the atmosphere.
A random shaped piece up to 1kg in size has practically zero chance to survive re-entry. A piece > 100kg coming in at Earth orbital velocity has a significant chance of reaching the surface. Something approaching a ton will pretty much hit the ground unless it breaks up in-flight.
So whacking it with one of the precious "mid-course" interceptors - the ones that miss 10 out of 10 is the only chance of making sure it does not hit someone on the head.
This is something which is possessed by 3 nations - USA (demonstrated), China (demonstrated) and Russia. Russia except bits of Caucasus is outside the impact zone so it is giggling and twiddling its thumbs. China is being Chinese. That leaves the USA to do the job. I am surprised they have not done it so far purely for show-off purposes.
The Chinese are deathly afraid that it will land in the US, because then they'll be forced to pay tariffs on the steel and aluminium content. And Trump will feel vindicated, taking to Twatter to announce an easy victory and the security of American jobs, fine American jobs, the best jobs, the big jobs.
I doubt we have a missile that can do much to it. The US have used an SM3 to kill a malfunctioning satellite, but that is a big box of bits. This space station is basically a big empty tube. So a small warhead designed to fragment and hit anything it gets near to, is just going to make holes in it. Like shooting a big rubbish bin with a shotgun. It'll let the air out, if the thing's still pressurised, but might not do much more.
The Chinese have also blown up a satellite. But the bigger the warhead you carry the smaller or slower your SAM is going to be. So as you don't need a big warhead at those speeds, you're unlikely to want to design a SAM that needs to be the size of an ICBM in order to lift its own warhead.
I doubt we have a missile that can do much to it. The US have used an SM3 to kill a malfunctioning satellite, but that is a big box of bits. This space station is basically a big empty tube.
mv2. While chinese and russian interceptors have warheads and are proximity based, USA does not. It is a direct impactor. Depending on trajectory you are looking at impacting with several kg at an intercept velocity in the km/s range. The energy release is equivalent to a small nuke. There will be nothing left regardless of its shape or size. If it hits. That is the key issue with direct impactors - they have to hit which is not easy if the relative velocities of the impactor and the target can exceed 12km/s (that is what you get for a best case intercept scenario).
Assuming the best case of a head on impact the energy released is the kinetic energy of the impactor plus a equal amount of kinetic energy of the target. So as you say mV^2 of the impactor. The impactor is launched with a rocket and according to the rocket equation only a very small part of the rockets energy ends up in the payload so we are in the realms of very very much less than a small nuke. Also when the impactor hits sufficient mass to release the energy in the large relatively empty volume of the target that piece of the target is going to go from orbital velocity to zero and get very hot, however the bulk of the target is not going to get hit so will be moving away from the impact zone unscathed at orbital velocity. The solution is to vaporize the impactor just before the impact so that its cross sectional area matches that of the target so all the energy is released. The chances of getting this exactly right at opposing orbital velocities are slim and a partial impact would be a good result with the most likely scenario being that big bits of the target would survive. Whilst an impactor would kill the target it's not going to stop it coming down.
according to the rocket equation
What f***ing equation?
Orbital velocity by the station remnant - 8km/s. ~50-70% of orbital velocity by the interceptor - they do not reach full 8km/s. If you are lucky and you manage to match them perfectly head on - 12km/s relative. If not - you are still looking at > 8km/s. How much energy did the rocket expand is irrelevant. What is relevant is what speed did it reach relative to the target.
Let's assume 10kg (it is more) and we get a nice rounded number of 1.44 TeraJoules. One Kiloton is 4.88 Joules. So we are looking a nearly 300 tons of TNT equivalent. Even if it was just hitting at 8km/s you are still looking at > 100 tons equivalent.
There will be NOTHING left from the station if it hits. The "if it hits" is the big if - they do not have a very stellar record.
If so, we are going to need payment on a 10%-25% tariff before any pieces can land in these United States.
(If other Regenistas insist that it is made with Chinese "aluminium", then I guess Britain has to split the tariff with China. That has something to do with Limeys inflicting extraneous vowels on their American cousins.)
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