Also, the pipe could have been shielded by the fuselage of the core stage until shortly before impacting, so it would not necessarily have as much charring as you would expect.I'm curious about both you and motif. You guys have "doubts" about that piece being part of an LM-5 core stage. Ok, let's go down this retarded rabbit hole together:
Did China deny this claim last year? I don't recall that they did.
Did the CIA somehow pay off that entire village to claim that this piece landed on their village out of nowhere? Since that time, I guess not a single person in that village has leaked this pay-off to the press or to their government, or has visibly spent any of the money. ROFLMAO
This is indefensible and yet you guys are defending it. It smacks of Trumpian surrealist denialism.
You guys also completely fail to recognize and publicly acknowledge that this is not some kind of developing space launch "trend", it's been established practice since 1990. Other nations launching this size stage into orbit have established procedures to safely de-orbit, despite the risk being small. China not bothering to do this just makes it look like a sh1tty space polluter (again).