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1. GeniusMusing (geniusmusing@nu.federati.net)'s status on Wednesday, 05-May-2021 21:16:00 EDT GeniusMusing
   Falling Chinese rocket to crash to Earth on Saturday as US calls for ‘responsible space behaviours’ Space | The Guardian
   https://nu.federati.net/url/281005
   
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   >The non-profit, federally funded Aerospace Corp has said it expects the debris to hit the Pacific near the Equator after passing over eastern US cities. The orbit covers a swath of the planet from New Zealand to Newfoundland. The US defence department expects it to fall to Earth on Saturday though where it will hit “cannot be pinpointed until within hours of its re-entry”, the Pentagon said.
   
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   1. lnxw48a1 (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Wednesday, 05-May-2021 23:20:54 EDT lnxw48a1

      in reply to
      @geniusmusing I’m hoping that the attention causes China’s space agency to revise its next launch vehicle, so that they can drop it in a sparsely populated area of the ocean. It looks like they had to strap other boosters to the main rocket in order to lift a piece of their space station, so it may also be wise to make the individual station segments in multiple pieces.
      
      (I do remember the space shuttles requiring two external boosters plus a huge external fuel tank. Their history of catastrophic explosions shows that this design was probably a mistake.)