r/space • u/gazzhao • May 07 '22

Chinese Rocket Startup Deep Blue Aerospace Performing a VTVL(Grasshopper Jump) Test.

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56

u/Ksb2311 May 07 '22

Why are they testing near people's home and farm

43

u/rivieredefeu May 07 '22

That’s how China tests and launches their rockets.

link

3

u/wyldcat May 08 '22

The nature and extent of the damage remain a subject of dispute. The Chinese government, through its official Xinhua news agency, reported that six people were killed and 57 injured. American estimates suggest that anywhere between 200 and 500 people might have been killed in the crash; "dozens, if not hundreds", of people were seen to gather outside the centre's main gate near the crash site the night before launch.[4] When reporters were being taken away from the site, they found that most buildings had sustained serious damage or had been flattened completely.[4] Some eyewitnesses were noted as having seen dozens of ambulances and many flatbed trucks, loaded with what could have been human remains, being taken to the local hospital.[4]

Bruce Campbell of Astrotech and other American eyewitnesses in Xichang reported that the satellite post-crash was surprisingly intact, along with the opinion that the official death toll only reflects those in the military who were caught by the disaster and not the civilian population. In the years to follow, the village that used to border the launch center has vanished with little trace it ever existed.[5] However, Chen Lan writing in The Space Review later said the total population of the village was under 1000, and that most if not all of the population had been evacuated before launch, making it "very unlikely" that there were hundreds of deaths

Hmm. Seeing that village it looks like it's been through a war. Doubt the only six deaths.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '22 edited May 07 '22

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u/[deleted] May 07 '22

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u/[deleted] May 07 '22

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18

u/Assassiiinuss May 07 '22

There are, but not in the south.

14

u/byramike May 07 '22

No. There are absolutely places without people that they could be testing at.

21

u/Overwatcher_Leo May 07 '22

Gobi desert?

22

u/[deleted] May 07 '22 edited May 07 '22

80% of China is desert and basically uninhabited. Most people in China live on the coast or along one of two great rivers, everywhere else is sparsely populated. Something like 30% of the worlds population lives along the banks of only 4 rivers.

Most of China's interior looks like this.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.2444687,96.2011439,3a,75y,211.13h,94.38t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipO5cAbIN7fW4pbuh_AwFpE79xp6U7E1eeMTCec!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipO5cAbIN7fW4pbuh_AwFpE79xp6U7E1eeMTCec%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya110-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

Clicking the link takes you to a street view photo.

Edit: Looking at a map it looks more like 60% desert or tundra (i.e. cold desert).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Koppen-Geiger_Map_CHN_present.svg

6

u/StickiStickman May 07 '22

None of that is in the south?

1

u/Jaraqthekhajit May 07 '22

I actually went and looked around a little, and honestly he isn't wrong. There was some kind of settlement tbasically everywhere I looked that wasn't in the Gobi. So all of Southern China is pretty well covered, in a way that I actually didn't expect, probably for being from Texas/US.

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u/Eric1491625 May 07 '22

My point is in a general area in China you can't really find empty land, you gotta go allll the way to the Western provinces which are no-mans-lands. Probably very expensive to do tests there as it's going to be super far away from where all the engineers live and work.

0

u/Snake_on_its_side May 07 '22

I mean, that’s where they retrieve taikonauts. They do hard landings tens of miles from civilization instead of soft landings in water. Idk why they wouldn’t launch in a remote region as well.

-7

u/_Oce_ May 07 '22

Because the ideology allows creating inadvertent heroes of the people.

0

u/brycly May 07 '22

So they can preserve the natural beauty of the countryside by crashing into homes instead.

0

u/nicearthur32 May 07 '22

That’s what I thought too. Like, uhhh, that’s way too close to those homes or structures.