Later, the Philippine Space Agency said the country's fishermen found a large number of giant metal debris around the islands of Busuanga and Mindoro in the South China Sea. And the Chinese characters of "China's manned spaceflight" written on the wreckage show that its identity is not simple. Based on this, the Philippines speculated that the wreckage was likely to be part of the Long March 5B carrier rocket launched by China from Wenchang, Hainan Province earlier this month.
As soon as this incident came out, the Western media first claimed that this was not the first time that Chinese spacecraft wrecks appeared in the waters around the Philippines, and deliberately played up that more and more Chinese spacecraft wrecks "fell from the sky" and were a potential threat to the local people.
Illustration: Pictures of the wreckage released by the Philippine side
Judging from the photos released by the Philippines, these metal wrecks with Chinese characters do come from Chinese spacecraft and should be the fairing part of the Long March 5B rocket, but the appearance of this wreckage does not mean that the mainland's space launch will cause harm to the Filipino people.
First of all, the fall off of components such as rocket fairings is not very heavy after the internal fuel is consumed, and the remaining rocket shell part is not very heavy, and mainly aluminum alloy materials, in the process of falling into the atmosphere, a large number of incineration, and finally fell to the surface of the earth only a small part, the probability of hitting people is minimal. Even in the seventies and eighties of the last century, at the peak of global space launches, there were no incidents of wreckage falling and injuring people.
Rocket wreckage generally burns up at height when it enters the atmosphere
Secondly, in order to prevent the loss of personnel and property caused by the fall of rocket wreckage, countries will accurately calculate the falling area before the rocket is launched to ensure that the rocket wreckage is far away from the densely populated area, and will notify the people in the relevant area in advance to pay attention to avoidance. Therefore, the cosmodrome in the inland area will generally be close to deserts, deep mountains and other inaccessible places, so that after the rocket is launched, the wreckage will fall into no man's land.
Taking the mainland as an example, the surrounding area of the Jiuquan launch center is the Gobi desert; The Taiyuan Launch Center is located in a mountainous area 284 kilometers from Taiyuan City; The Xichang Launch Center is also located in the mountains of southwest Sichuan. The Baikonur launch station built by the Soviet Union in Kazakhstan and the Vostochny cosmodrome built by Russia in the Far East later deliberately looked for sparsely populated areas in terms of location.
Illustration: The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is located on the desert Gobi
Another way to avoid falling damage from rocket wreckage is to launch it off the coast and let the wreckage fall on the ocean. The Wenchang Launch Center on the mainland, the Cape Canaveral launch site in the United States, and the space station set up by France in Guyana are all such launch sites built near the sea. Therefore, the wreckage of the Long March 5B rocket fell into the South China Sea and eventually drifted to the coast of the Philippines, which is actually the inevitable result of the mainland's calculations, and is not allowed to scatter the wreckage as foreign media say.
The Cape Canaveral launch site in the United States is also built near the sea
Of course, foreign media chose this kind of reporting caliber not because they did not know anything about it, but deliberately wanted to smear China's space development. Previously, when the mainland sent the "Tianhe" core module and the "Wentian" experimental module of the space station into space, the Western media also hyped the topic of space debris.
In contrast, hyping up the mainland spacecraft after it was indeed found in the Philippine Sea is no longer the most bottomless smear act. Western media once speculated that the wreckage of the Long March 5B rocket would fall in Spain and other places.
And this smear actually reflects a complex mentality of the West towards the development of mainland space.
For a long time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was the fastest growing country in the global space field, and the number of space launches ranked first in the world for a long time. However, with the decline of comprehensive national strength, the frequency of US space launches has also dropped significantly. In 2021, the mainland surpassed the United States with 51 launches a year, becoming the country with the most space launch missions in the world. This year, the mainland plans to carry out more than 60 space launch missions. This undoubtedly made the West feel a little helpless.
Figure: The Long March 5B Yao-3 carrier rocket launched in July this year sent the "Wentian" experimental module into space
In addition to the frequency of rocket launches, the rapid construction of the mainland space station has also made the West hungry. The International Space Station is running out of life, but the United States and Europe have not come up with a formal alternative. On the other hand, on the mainland, the construction of the "Tiangong" space station is proceeding rapidly. Looking closely, the Western hype about the debris of mainland rockets is basically when the components of the "Tiangong" space station such as "Tianhe", "Wentian" and "Mengtian" are sent into space.
One thing to note is that the attitude of the Philippine side towards the debris of the mainland rocket seems to have changed. NASA officials appear to want to push the Philippine government to ratify the signing of a treaty on space debris to seek compensation for the fallen wreckage in the future. Although it is unlikely that the wreckage of a continental rocket would cause substantial damage to the Philippines.
Illustration: Rocket wreckage found in Philippine waters
However, this incident still reflects that the strong pro-US forces in the Philippines have begun to affect the normal judgment of the country's professional and technical departments. Plus the Marcos Jr. administration is changing its diplomatic thinking and repairing relations with the United States. If this risk of deliberately catering to the West spreads, it will not be ruled out in the future, and the Manila side will deliberately speak out on the issue of rocket wreckage to help the Western camp create problems.
But neither the West's dark nor the Philippines' possible actions can hinder the mainland's continued space exploration activities. Compared with smearing the mainland's space activities, what Western public opinion should do now is actually to spur their own space departments and promote the development of their own space exploration.