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A comment on New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospace's Experts. Parent comment

Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by pfdietz on Sunday November 06, 2022 @10:54AM (#33493882)
It's economically hardnosed of them. It's on average cheaper to just take the chance and pay off damages if someone is injured or killed. Remember, the highest chance of fatality will be in densely populated lower latitude countries where the monetary cost of killing someone is lower.
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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by elteto on Sunday November 06, 2022 @11:23AM (#33494206)
The won’t even pay for any damages. They would never allow one of these to reenter over US airspace or other large, powerful countries. But if it falls in the middle of some small country, tough luck getting paid for damages.
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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by pfdietz on Sunday November 06, 2022 @12:17PM (#33494831)
They are signatory to a treaty that requires them to pay for damages. And they had no control over where this booster came down (except that it would come down between 41S/41N, roughly), so your "they would never allow" is incorrect.
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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by supertrope on Sunday November 06, 2022 @12:18PM (#33494844)
China signed the Outer Space Treaty. Your rocket your damage your bill.
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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by chihuahua on Sunday November 06, 2022 @01:00PM (#33495324)
But how is anyone going to collect on the bill, if China doesn't want to pay?
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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by tgsovlerkhgsel on Sunday November 06, 2022 @02:08PM (#33495929)
Just quickly and quietly paying is likely cheaper than the international incident, the "China refuses to comply with treaty" headlines, and likely resulting souring of international relations.
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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by supertrope on Sunday November 06, 2022 @12:21PM (#33494883)
Two thirds of the planet is water. Most land is uninhabited. Population and property is concentrated in cities. The chance of debris hitting you is less than a lightning strike.
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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by mcculley on Sunday November 06, 2022 @01:16PM (#33495463)
There is a difference between the chance of debris hitting a person and the chance of it hitting any person.

Regardless of the probability, there is a problem with choosing that risk for someone else without their consent.

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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by mlyle on Sunday November 06, 2022 @03:50PM (#33496960)
> Regardless of the probability, there is a problem with choosing that risk for someone else without their consent.

Every action we take imposes risks on other people.

Economic models are one of our best tools to use in weighing these risks against each other and the costs of mitigating them.

(OTOH: China's cost to mitigate most of these risks would be, generally, pretty small... It's a cost of being in the space game, IMO.)

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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by mcculley on Monday November 07, 2022 @09:20AM (#33506060)
There is an enormous gulf between most kinds of harm one can do to someone in a different country on the other side of the world and dropping part of a rocket on them.

Nobody agrees a priori to China’s assessment of the their economic value.

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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by pfdietz on Monday November 07, 2022 @11:00PM (#33515736)
Even if you take the US assessment of the value of a person's life it probably doesn't make sense for China to do anything to control the entry of these stages.
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Re:New Long March 5B Uncontrolled Reentry Tracked by Aerospa... by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on Sunday November 06, 2022 @08:51PM (#33500058)
It's simple if you use the Foreign Death Conversion Chart.
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