Logo

American Security Council Foundation

Back to main site

Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Chinese Rocket Returns to Earth Over Indian Ocean

Monday, May 10, 2021

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats

Comments: 0

im-336041

HONG KONG—Debris from a Chinese rocket re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, Chinese officials said, easing days of anxiety that pieces would fall on densely populated areas.

The China Manned Space Engineering Office said the Long March-5B rocket made the re-entry at 10:24 a.m. Beijing time on Sunday. Most of the components of the rocket’s wreckage were burned up and destroyed during the re-entry, it said.

The rocket was sent into orbit to ferry a core component of its space station, the Tianhe module, on April 29. It was the first of a series of planned launches as China begins construction on the space station.

The rocket’s size, about the height of a 10-story building, and concerns from space-monitoring organizations that the entry back to earth wouldn’t be controlled caused worry in recent days, as various tracking organizations predicted potential landing sites covering swaths of the planet.

While there was a minuscule chance of the debris hitting populated areas, the episode has raised the issue of responsible space behavior, with China ramping up its space program and private corporations globally engaging in space activity.

Bill Nelson, who leads the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, criticized the re-entry on Saturday saying, “It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said Friday that the risks of harm were small. Spokesman Wang Wenbin said that authorities were watching the situation and that because the upper stage of this rocket had been deactivated, most of its parts would burn up upon re-entry, minimizing chances of damage to aviation or ground facilities and activities.

Among other space initiatives, China plans for its first permanent space base—the Tiangong space station—to be operational by next year. The space station is seen as a rival to the much larger International Space Station, and in the coming months, China is planning more launches to send cargo and crew to the Tianhe module that the rocket launched.

Photo: The Long March-5B rocket launch in April.
PHOTO: ZHOU JIAYI/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-rocket-returns-to-earth-over-indian-ocean-11620536102

Comments RSS feed for comments on this page

There are no comments yet. Be the first to add a comment by using the form below.