Uncontrollable Falling Space Station Warmly Received as a Martyr

原创 Charles L. theBeijinger

At around 8.15am last Monday morning, Tiangong-1 harmlessly crashed in the south Pacific Ocean after a week of nervous uncertainty. With no way to control the 18,739 pound (8.5 metric ton) uncommunicative Chinese space station, some Western news portrayed that the inevitable Tiangong-1 crash zone as a possible threat to public safety – albeit an infinitesimally low one, rated at just one in a trillion.

"Higher probability" is a relative term

For Chinese news, however, the crashing space debris was not seen like a proverbial sword of Damocles. Instead, Tiangong-1 was heralded as the unbridled success of the Chinese space program. And, to signify it as a symbol of national pride, Chinese news depicted Tiangong-1 and its demise as a martyr that sacrificed itself for its nation.

As the space station returned back to the Earth from which it was shot into space in September 2011, many in China are saying "goodbye."

CCTV paid their respects by turning Tiangong-1 into a talking cartoon space station and quoting his last words:

Besides space satellites, China is fond of turning PLA soliders into cartoons

Today, I must say goodbye to everyone. From now on, all of my responsibilities and tasks must be taken on by Tiangong-2 and other future Chinese space stations. China, jiayou!

Made by China Science Communication and broadcast by the People's Daily, a video (see below) explaining the history behind Tiangong-1 also anthropomorphized the space station which is seen draping its arm around the next-generation Tiangong-2 and saying, "It's all up to you, now":

The hand-drawn time-lapse cartoon style is evocative of YouTube science educational videos

CCTV Finance was among numerous Chinese media that boasted that Tiangong-1 had stayed in space for 2,378 days, far longer than its two-year operating span, as well as after the Mar 16, 2016 date when China lost control over it, making its inevitable crash to earth an open guessing game.

Tiangong-1 is seen in a fly-by as stirring, emotional background music plays

And while the ending of a CCTV video triumphantly asserted "Tiangong-1: Mission accomplished" (shown above), other messages by the Chinese state broadcaster painted a tragic portrait of the fallen martyr.

The images in the following CCTV Weibo post combine to form the sentence: "Tiangong-1, please respond: goodbye."

The Al Jazeera version of this is, "Beijing, we have a problem"

Odds were low that Tiangong-1 would ever crash upon the country from which it originated, but that doesn't mean that China is any stranger to falling rocket debris. Due to the location of its inland rocket launch center, Chinese rocket parts are often reported to have crashed throughout the country, whether in fiery explosions or in someone's living room.

So when Tiangong-1's re-entry was reportedly seen in Beijing (shown below), there was no sense of danger or impending doom. However much Tiangong-1 was worth scientifically or technologically to China, it has proven to be far more valuable as the dutiful martyr which gave its life for its country, a sentiment echoed by netizens online.

At 39°N, Beijing happens to be in the same yellow-colored "higher probability" zone seen in the ABC News broadcast

When one comment derided the flowery rhetoric over Tiangong-1 by asking, "What re-entry? This is a crash and burn," one netizen explained that the demise of China's first space station is nothing short of a personal tragedy:

If someone in your family passed away, would you use those words to tell other people, or would you say that your family member "kicked the bucket"?

If Tiangong-1 was family, then we'll be seeing some new members soon. Launched in 2016, Tiangong-2 will be part of a larger modular Chinese space station expected to begin construction between 2019 and 2022.

Images: Weibo.com, ABCnews.go.com