It's Where And How Fast That Are The Variables

by ANN Senior Correspondent Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien

NASA's stalled manned space program now has a new rival in efficiency: unmanned probes that were assembled wrong by Lockheed Martin (Genesis), boosters where measurements were programmed in English instead of metric units by Lockheed Martin (Mars Climate Orbiter), or got slam-dunked a yard (which is a little less than a meter) by careless goons at -- take a guess -- Lockheed Martin (NOAA Prime-2).

In the meantime, the Chinese space program has had a whole set of different problems. A probe that was supposed to burn up on re-entry after it had outlived its useful life, didn't. It was supposed to be recovered quietly and safely, but wasn't. The Chinese aren't saying exactly why.

The satellite, according to the BBC and China's official Xinhua news service, was still in one piece (more or less) when it slammed into a house, destroying the upper floor and not doing the satellite much good, either.

Fortunately, the residents were not at home when their house received this celestial remodeling -- one lady had left just five minutes before. The householders took it with the cheerful fatalism of Chinese folklore: "Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year," the tenant, Huo Jiyu, was quoted as saying. If this is how good luck begins in China, maybe Huo ought to buy some lottery tickets.

Personally, I've never thought of having my house demolished by space junk as particularly auspicious, but it takes all kinds.

The satellite was vaguely described as being used in "land-surveys and other research," suggesting it may have been a military or intelligence satellite. That might also have explained its deorbiting a section just 18 days into its mission -- it may have been trying to deliver an instrumentation or film pod for aerial pickup or parachute landing, as American satellites in the sixties and seventies did.

Satellite-mishap connoisseurs suggested that Lockheed Martin may have leaked the Genesis satellite's inverted-switch technology to China. Alternatively, it is possible that computer files that were part of the Loral satellite- and ICBM-guidance system acquired during the nineties contained the same error as the files that sent the Mars Climate Orbiter, launched in 1998, into oblivion.

FMI: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/news/mco991110.html