[ronyclau]

There is a documentary named "Falling from the Sky"[1] from 2009, which depicts how scared and helpless people in a Hunan village were, every time a rocket wss launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The village was located within the area where rocket debris would fall, and the villagers were basically told to suck it up by officials.

[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2136916/

[r721]

See also this NYT piece with a lot of photos:

>Remote Russians Recycle Rocket Wreckage

>Space junk from rockets launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia ends up in the remote Mezensky District, where residents repurpose it for hunting sleds, tools and boats.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/lens/space-rocket-parts-r...

[blinding-streak]

That is a fantastic alliteration.

[AlbertCory]

Headline writers amusing themselves.

WSJ headlines tend toward puns.

[throwaway4good]

In the 90es China used to send up satellites for US companies; cheap and cheerful until a major accident happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708

And after the accident; the Chinese fixed their rockets and the Americans started their boycot; including banning them from the ISS leading to the space station program the CZ5B is a part of.

Today the Chinese space program is a source of national pride and is cherred and followed as the US space program was in its heyday.

[Fatnino]

The Chinese fixed their rockets using classified information that the American companies leaked in their report on the crash. This gave the Chinese missile industry a major advance in guidance tech.

In recent years the "cherred" (sic) Chinese space program has heavily borrowed without asking from the soviet and other world space programs to race through a checklist of space achievements the Chinese want to pretend they developed themselves.

For example: see Shenzhou 5's uncanny resemblance to a Soyuz capsule.

Now, to be sure, China hasn't cloned these 1:1. They have even managed to hit checklist items that the rest of the world hasn't got to yet, like communicating with a spacecraft landed on the far side of the moon. But foreign design bones are deeply embedded in their entire program and it's plainly visible to any that care to look.

Contrast this behavior to the US/Soviet space race where each side developed unique spacecraft and spacestation designs with unique abilities and unique degrees of success. With one exception: in the late 80s, on the verge of their collapse, the soviets copied the American spaceshuttle. They even made it better than the American version in almost every way but didn't realize that the entire concept was a huge boondoggle that was a mistake for the US to even develop and fly.

[GekkePrutser]

I can't really help not feeling bad for them. I think the Chinese people need a reality check. Hopefully this kind of movie will spread awareness. The people that should feel bad are those supporting the regime.

The CCP exists because the Chinese let it exist. If they want to have a fair society they'll have to overthrow it sooner or later. We can't do it for them. There is no other way. Even sanctions hurt the people more than the regime (see North Korea). People are nothing but livestock to them. Hopefully these examples will help teach the population to see what they really are. The people 'displaced' by the Olympics are another example.

It seems pretty popular still, but cracks seem to be forming after the heavy-handed Corona measures in Shanghai. I'm hoping it will sow the seeds of discontent and eventually a revolution will happen. Or a gradual move to democracy perhaps. But the tighter controlled a dictatorship is, the lower the chance of that.

Maybe I'm too optimistic but I think that dictatorships will always fall eventually. Even strict ones like China and North Korea.