Why It’s a Bad Idea to Launch Rockets Over Land
In China, a Cold War-era strategy to ward off foreign enemies has made for some dangerous modern-day conditions.
On Friday morning in China, a rocket blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the Sichuan province with a pair of navigation satellites bound for orbit around Earth. As the rocket climbed higher and higher, the four strap-on boosters that launched with it began to fall away. This is supposed to happen; the boosters provide extra lift in the minutes after launch, and when they burn through their fuel, they separate and fall back down to Earth.
The satellites made it safely into orbit. But back on the ground, there were flames.
One of those four discarded boosters had landed near a town in the Guangxi region and exploded. Video by onlookers and
