Intelsat 708 AKA Long March 3B's maiden flight

[Shlug]

Its surprising to me that nobody has discussed the 1996 launch of Intelsat 708 on here. Anyways, i have some photos of the rocket both before, during and after its launch.

[ChrisC]

Just for context, this was a 1996 launch that failed.  Wikipedia article

[big_gazza]

Why discuss a failed launch from nearly 30 years ago?

[jcm]

Thank you for discussing this launch from nearly 30 years ago! It's hard to find images of specific 1990s Chinese launches.
And this was a spectacular one, I remember it well.

[Shlug]

And this was a spectacular one, I remember it well.

Could you please elaborate? Did you hear about the launch or did you directly participate in it?

[Shlug]

Why discuss a failed launch from nearly 30 years ago?

This is the failed launch that led to China being kicked out of the international space market, also caused satellite technology to be put in the ITAR munitions list, essentially prohibiting them from being transported to China. So, yeah, theres a reason to discuss this.

[Phazzee]

Here's some more photos I've found on the Chinese web and other web over the last few months related to this launch.

[Shlug]

Im not sure about this one but im pretty sure these are also pictures of Long March 3B Y1 before its launch, altough with the intelsat logo not being present on the fairing its really hard to confirm

[Shlug]

Why discuss a failed launch from nearly 30 years ago?

Just for the enjoyment of discussing a Chinese failure?

Do i  look like i am discussing a failure in China that happened in the 1980's, that involved a rocket not lifting off first-try, that almost no one remembers anymore, documentation of which does not exist because of it being such a minor nuisance?

[Apollo22]

The space review got a few detailed stories about it.

"intelsat 708" site:https://www.thespacereview.com

Why discuss a failed launch from nearly 30 years ago?

This is the failed launch that led to China being kicked out of the international space market, also caused satellite technology to be put in the ITAR munitions list, essentially prohibiting them from being transported to China. So, yeah, theres a reason to discuss this.

Spot on. This is why it is a valuable subject of discussion.

This is a strange thread for someone to start with their very 1st post on NSF. I suspect you have your motivations, just trying to understand what they might be, and when I ask you fire back with some contrived response about ITAR... 

1-you have 15 posts under your belt, so: pot, kettle
2-you know nothing about ITAR, or only rumors
3-you have decided unilaterally in your first post, that the subject is not worth discussing. Well, maybe to you but to others, maybe it is of interest ? You can decides to stay out of it.

[Hobbes-22]

Why discuss a failed launch from nearly 30 years ago?

Because this forum has done an excellent job of documenting spaceflight history, and this flight is part of that history.

[Apollo22]

It baffles me that, almost 30 years later we still don't know for sure whether that rocket crushed a nearby village, killing a lot of people - or not. The Space Review writtings I linked are a decent inquiry on the topic; yet the jury is still split.

The whole saga was a development of the Challenger disaster and the previous "all Shuttle policy". Besides Challenger, within merely 10 months (August 1985 - June 1986) Titan III and Ariane failed twice, then it was Delta. April-May 1986 was just one failure after another: Titan 34D-9 big kaboom at Vandenberg, Ariane failing for the second time, then Delta losing a GOES satellite.
This barely left Atlas and the Japanese launchers standing for the western world... before an Atlas picked a fight with a thunderstorm early 1987, and lost it.

Bottom line: most rocket grounded = a big satellite backlog that dragged for many years, and gave China an opportunity to sell Long March rockets to a belaguered US satellite industry.

Part of the broader controversy here : which led to comsats going to the ITAR list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_2E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708

[Shlug]

we still don't know for sure whether that rocket crushed a nearby village, killing a lot of people

We for sure know that it flattened 80 houses in Mayelin Village, located right at the main gate of the launch center, after which it somehow vanished from the face of the earth. The casualties part however is still confusing.

It could have been anywhere from 6 (the official number) to 500-600 (the disputed number). Some sources even state that 1000 died there, however that would make Mayelin Village completely empty, due to its population possibly being the same number at the time of the launch.

We only have 2 confirmed casualties so far; 2 engineers from CALT (Qian Zhiying, Yang Linzhen), and 4 more possible casualties (3-2 villagers / another engineer)

[Phazzee]

we still don't know for sure whether that rocket crushed a nearby village, killing a lot of people

We for sure know that it flattened 80 houses in Mayelin Village, located right at the main gate of the launch center, after which it somehow vanished from the face of the earth.

Worth considering that many homes nearby were made of poor materials (see attached) and susceptible to the shockwave from the end of the flight. Unless anyone has satellite images from the 90s, the official count is 80 houses damaged (quoted here: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2323/1).

[Shlug]

Unless anyone has satellite images from the 90s

So about those pictures of XSLC from the 90's... Do they even exist anymore?

On google earth/maps the earliest satellite images of the residential area of XSLC is from 1985, and the picture itself is hyper blurry. I have only found pictures of the launch center from 1981 and 1984 so far, no actual pictures from the 90s.

[big_gazza]

In anticipation of the expected responses to my posting, allow me to expand on why I find the central premise to be false.

Controversy revolved around US involvement in the failure analysis where US experts identify the failure of the rocket IMU as the central cause of the loss of control.  Chinese authorities revised their official findings in line with US advice.  In a sensible world this would be taken as an example of co-operation and would be something to be lauded.  In Washington however this was the cause of outrage - how dare US technical knowledge be shared with the Chinese? Hawks insisted that such knowledge would assist Chinese to build better (military) rockets, as though somehow the Chinese can't build workable IMUs or indentify fault modes in their hardware? Fines were levied to punish those who had dared to co-operate, and ITAR was imposed. 

All of this was totally unneccesary and unjustified, and was driven solely for a political and commercial imperative.  It was not the launch failure itself that led to the exclusion of China from international launch market but the contrived and artifical US response, deliberately invoked to eliminate a commerial competitor and in pursuit of geopolitical advantage.

[Apollo22]

Unless anyone has satellite images from the 90s

So about those pictures of XSLC from the 90's... Do they even exist anymore?

On google earth/maps the earliest satellite images of the residential area of XSLC is from 1985, and the picture itself is hyper blurry. I have only found pictures of the launch center from 1981 and 1984 so far, no actual pictures from the 90s.

Landsat ground resolution back then was 18 m at best, fixed with the NRO back in 1966 not to encroach on their classified spysat business.
Spot-1, launched in February 1986 changed that to 15-10 meters, starting with the Chernobyl disaster... so my advice would be to try browsing SPOT imagery.

[Shlug]

Apparently CCTV7 once broadcast an episode about the 1996 launch failure. I found these screenshots on the Chinese web.

[Shlug]

In the "Disaster at Xichang" article it says that the payload section of the rocket tore off seconds before explosion, however that may have been incorrect.

The "payload section of the rocket tearing off" moment may have actually been the rockets flight termination system activating.
You see, in the many videos of the rockets crash, seconds before it impacts the hillside, its boosters seemingly detach from it in flames. That was the flight termination system being activated manually. The rocket also seemingly turns around after getting detonated. Notice how the flames from 2 boosters on one side suddenly end up on the other side of the rocket right after it gets detonated.

[Shlug]

People have been saying that the Chinese "for some reason did not detonate the rocket", and this essentially disproves that.

It would be  weird for them to not detonate the rocket, as they did in almost  every other rocket  failure before (excluding those that didn't require remote detonation, or exploded by themselves, apstar-2 etc,)