Breakfast at Bucks is like a walk down memory lane for me, with a story at each table. This artifact caught my eye anew, and the story on the placard seemed surreal:

“File this under: What the heck (we) they thinking? [sic =) ] In 1996 we hired the Chinese government to launch a Loral communications satellite of ours [made in Palo Alto]. It took off sideways, flew 3 miles and leveled a village. This solar panel was purloined (repatriated?) from the quarantined crash site.”

I generally have to take the tales with a grain of salt, but sure enough, it was quite a disaster capping a string of haywire flights for the Long March rocket.

From the Washington Post: “For years before that accident, Chinese space executives tried to cover up the causes of the errors, U.S. industry executives said. In almost every case, the Chinese denied that their Long March rockets had been at fault and blamed the Western-built satellites.

Then, on Jan. 25, 1995, the top of a Long March disintegrated just as it hit supersonic speeds and encountered high-altitude winds. Again, a Hughes satellite was destroyed. This time the rocket's debris fell on villagers -- the Chinese said six people were killed, but Westerners believe the toll was higher. Again, Hughes privately argued bitterly with the Chinese, who blamed the company's satellite. And again, Western space experts didn't believe them. "The Chinese just kept blaming Hughes," one U.S. space executive said.

Then the Loral satellite -- Intelsat 7A -- blew up [on Valentine’s Day, 1996. I remember that day as they day Sabeer and I signed the series A term sheet for Hotmail]. The Chinese rocket detonated 22 seconds into flight, obliterating the hotel where Western observers had dropped off their luggage only hours before. U.S. engineers were held in a bunker for five hours before they could retrieve the melted pieces of their three-ton satellite, which was to have beamed TV shows to Latin America for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.