{"id":9837,"date":"2022-03-23T07:01:01","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T07:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=9837"},"modified":"2022-03-23T07:01:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T07:01:01","slug":"the-falling-chinese-space-rocket-is-a-policy-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=9837","title":{"rendered":"The falling Chinese space rocket is a policy failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a scene in The West Wing<\/em>\u2019s second season in which one of the protagonists is told a Chinese satellite is falling to Earth, but no one knew exactly when or where.<\/p>\n

\u201cA satellite is crashing to Earth, and NASA sent us a fax?\u201d Donna Moss says, clearly concerned. But few in the show shared her fear, because debris in space often falls out of orbit and is either burned up upon reentry or lands harmlessly somewhere on the planet. <\/p>\n

The US government estimates around 200 to 400 tracked objects enter Earth\u2019s atmosphere every year \u2014 roughly one a day \u2014 out of the 170 million pieces of space debris floating above our heads. The fallen items rarely make news, though, since they usually crash into the ocean, which covers about 70 percent of the Earth\u2019s surface, or sparsely populated areas.<\/p>\n

Yet news of a Chinese rocket falling uncontrollably to Earth has awakened the Donna Moss in many of us. <\/p>\n

A section of the Long March 5B rocket, which launched China\u2019s new space station into orbit last week, is expected to hit somewhere on the planet either on Saturday or Sunday, experts say. At 10 stories and 18 tons (36,000 pounds), it\u2019s one of the largest items in decades to spiral in an undirected dive toward the Earth. <\/p>\n

It could cause serious damage if it hits a major population zone, but so far few governments \u2014 especially the one in Beijing \u2014 seem overly concerned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe probability of this process causing harm on the ground is extremely low,\u201d Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday. The White House and Pentagon, meanwhile, say they\u2019re tracking the rocket and have no plans to shoot it out of the sky.<\/p>\n

After speaking with experts, two things have become clear about this episode. <\/p>\n

The first is that the idea of a large rocket hurtling toward Earth is understandably scary. It conjures up images of a city devastated by the impact, potentially injuring thousands. <\/p>\n

Importantly, the chance of anything like that happening is infinitesimally small \u2014 like 1 in a 196.9 million chance small. While there have been a few bad incidents in the past, nothing on that scale has ever happened, and very likely won\u2019t now.<\/p>\n

The second is that it\u2019s troubling this scenario could happen in the first place. Why is it possible for China, or any other space-faring nation, to launch massive rockets and let them fall to earth willy-nilly?<\/p>\n

The answer to that is policy failure: Despite regulations on space flight and conduct, the issue of rocket reentry is loosely and poorly regulated, so countries cut corners and take their chances that a falling rocket won\u2019t hit anything major.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in the realm of risk management, and states are willing to swallow the risk,\u201d said Christopher Newman, a professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University in Britain.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s always the more-than-zero chance that their luck runs out and a falling rocket sparks a catastrophe. Experts are unanimous that the falling Chinese rocket is a symptom of a much larger problem that needs solving sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t want any more of this kind of thing to happen, we need the big powers to step up,\u201d said Bleddyn Bowen, a professor of space warfare and policy at the University of Leicester in the UK.<\/p>\n

How to stop the next falling rocket<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a trope about space that it\u2019s the \u201cWild West,\u201d a phrase I often catch myself using. But the truth is that there have been rules governing operations in space for decades.<\/p>\n

Click Here: <\/a><\/p>\n

In the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and Liability Convention of 1972 are guidelines for how to punish a country that lets one of its rockets cause damage on Earth. Basically, those rules say that the offending state can be held liable by the victim nation. So, in this case, if the Chinese rocket were to land in the middle of New York City (which, again, is extremely unlikely to happen), the Biden administration could ask China to pay for damages and demand other recourse.<\/p>\n

In other words, this is a state-to-state issue. \u201cIf the rocket lands on my house, I can\u2019t go and sue China,\u201d Northumbria\u2019s Newman told me. That\u2019d be UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson\u2019s job to call up Chinese President Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s really it. There\u2019s nothing in international law to stop any nation from letting any of the 900 rockets currently in orbit from falling in an unplanned way. \u201cThis isn\u2019t illegal,\u201d Newman said about the current saga of the Chinese rocket. \u201cThere is no sort of regulation on an international level on reentry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Individual countries essentially govern themselves when they make plans to launch a rocket into space. If the Chinese government is fine with the plan of an unplanned reentry, then that\u2019s what\u2019ll happen at the end of the mission.<\/p>\n

Naturally, such plans cause frustration among space experts. \u201cI think it\u2019s negligent of them,\u201d Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics in the US, told the New York Times on Thursday. \u201cI think it\u2019s irresponsible.\u201d Last year, in fact, another Chinese Long March 5B rocket burned up and pieces of metal fell onto a few buildings in the Ivory Coast.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s important to remember two things. <\/p>\n

First, China \u2014 and other leading space-faring nations like the US, Russia, Japan, and the European Union \u2014 know that the chance of hitting people or infrastructure is so small that they don\u2019t feel the need to spend extra money and time to plan for a controlled reentry. <\/p>\n

Ensuring a rocket splashes into, say, the Pacific Ocean, requires more fuel and staff work, which increases the cost of missions. For most space agencies grappling with small budgets, cutting costs on that part of the operation is worth the risk.<\/p>\n

Second, and relatedly, China isn\u2019t the only country taking their chances here; others, including the US, have as well, leading to some scary scenes.<\/p>\n

In 1978, a Soviet satellite carrying a nuclear reactor crash-landed in northern Canada and spewed radioactive waste. The next year, the NASA-launched Skylab space station \u2014 America\u2019s first one \u2014 fell out of orbit, with parts landing in the Indian Ocean and in Western Australia, though luckily hurting no one.<\/p>\n

\u201cBad behavior was quite typical by the Americans and Soviets during the space race,\u201d said Leicester\u2019s Bowen. \u201cThose who live in glass houses should not throw stones,\u201d he said of current complaints about the Chinese rocket.<\/p>\n

While there are more safety measures now and technology has improved, experts say the main problem is still that space law is too lax on this issue. They point to the Ivory Coast incident last year, where the country decided not to seek recourse from China, potentially out of the desire not to anger a key economic partner.<\/p>\n

So what has to change? <\/p>\n

Experts say countries like China, the US, and others should leverage this moment and work through the United Nations to regulate rocket reentry. They should compel space programs to spend more to ensure their rockets land far away from people, and even wildlife, when possible. Even if the risk of a calamity is extremely low today, the fact that it\u2019s more than zero is already too high.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this is good for anything, it\u2019s an opportunity for everyone to take ownership of space as a domain of human activity and to want a say in how it\u2019s governed,\u201d said Northumbria\u2019s Newman. \u201cWe\u2019re now at the stage where this is generating concern.\u201d<\/p>\n

But until there\u2019s political will for such action \u2014 and governments take the rocket reentry problem seriously \u2014 we\u2019ll have more Chinese-rocket-type scares.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a scene in The West Wing\u2019s second season in which one of the protagonists is told a Chinese satellite is falling to Earth, but no one knew exactly when or where. \u201cA satellite is crashing to Earth, and NASA sent us a fax?\u201d Donna Moss says, clearly concerned. But few in the show shared…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}