Gongol.com Archives: August 2022
August 2, 2022
Clean up after your space program
"Clean up after yourself" is a premise so simple that even toddlers can understand it. Toddlers, unlike the Chinese Communist Party, do not launch giant rockets into space, permitting oversized debris to fall back to Earth, and not only fail to acknowledge their own carelessness, but also withhold vital information about the debris from the rest of the world. ■ When an analyst from the Aerospace Corp. (a nonprofit company funded by the US government) declares that the behavior "could be considered irresponsible", he's biting his tongue. While it is literally awesome that SpaceX is well on its way to a hundred successful vertical rocket landings, nobody expects all of the world's space agencies and private companies to have the same technological skill. But it's just plain reckless to leave the rest of the world guessing where giant blocks of space metal will come crashing down. ■ Sometimes it is necessary to accept imperfect steps along the way to development. For instance, broadly speaking, it is better for people to move from cooking with indoor fires to cooking with electricity. That is the case, even if the electricity is, for now, generated in part by fossil fuels. It is better to take at least some steps in a better direction towards improved health and safety than to persist in the high-hazard behaviors of the status quo. ■ But disregarding the safety of the entire global population to serve the careless ambitions of a government space program that has been chronically contaminating the Earth below for years is unnecessary and regressive. It isn't a mark of progress to rain wreckage out of the sky. ■ The irresponsibility of it all has been called out before, so withholding even the information that would help other countries to plan for the falling debris is both arrogant and abusive. ■ Communism has always been at odds with the value of the individual human life. It always will be, too. That contributes to the CCP's obvious disregard for the consequences of falling space debris, even when the odds of it causing a human casualty could run as high as 1 in 230. Something is deeply wrong with a mindset that permits that kind of behavior to go on, and even a child could see it -- after they're done picking up their toys.
