1996
replyThe village is pretty much gone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZTFgZ9zl74
Wow, that certainly gives context to why modern range safety is so strict about automatically or manually blowing the rocket up once it deviates too far from the planned path
replyI'm referring to a different Chinese launch failure in 1996.
replyThere is some VHS footage on YouTube surreptitiously shot by Americans on-site supporting the payload which became a guerrilla documentary.
The village was annihilated but the official number from the CCP was 6 dead.
6.
It’s not the only time the CCP has reported an unbelievably low number of casualties in a large catastrophe. Seems like the number of dead is always around 6-7 (sorry) no matter how big the incident is. Like the flooding of that tunnel a few years ago where the authorities tried to hide how many flowers were put up by the tunnel
replyOr on a larger scale, their publicly disclosed COVID deaths.
replyYou mean like this https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aef5697, or this https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8354557/.
replyYes, but at a significantly higher level of magnitude. Their official count is 122,398; the US reported 1,238,123. Both are undercounts, but China's is probably much more of an undercount.
replyNot this one. An old one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708
replyThe Chinese government say very few were killed. But personally, my position is that the guys who routinely publish their embarrassing-seeming failures are quite believable (the US publishes that their planes fall off their carriers) and those who say they're perfect are probably lying. So I don't believe their numbers.