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China Launches Third Unmanned Space Capsule
Guppy06 writes: "As you read this China's third unmanned (except for a dummy) Shenzhou capsule is whizzing over your head. It was launched around 1400 UTC on one of China's newer Long March II F boosters. There's an article at CNN. As per usual, our good friends at NORAD have all the details of its orbit available here, but after last September you need to register to get it..."
I think it is good another country is in space. It is a vast frontier that if we want to explore we need to work togeather, globally. The ISS is a start but we need to get many more countries to have space programs. It is a world effort to do anything up there and it is somewhere worth exploring.
The only problem is that after the first capsule, they were hungry again after an hour.
China now poses a serious threat to Nasa...no, kidding... But if the government doesn't give Nasa more money....
DUCK!!!
And the brethren went away edified.
If they had launched a N'sync member instead. Who cares if it lacks the tech to keep him safe. It would relieve us of a Nsuck member.
I can see it now.
PAy 20mil to goto spacestation but get to ride in china's one for free. Hopefully the boybands are too dumb to realize they are unmanned and they would be cargo without life support.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
At whom?
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
SpaceRef has images from China television on today's launch.
Does the side of the pod say "China" (like we (americans) have USA) or does it say "Made in China" like everything else in the USA?
This should be great for mass production of space fairing ships. Tourist travel here we come!
So what exactly does this mean for the US space program? This country has never been the type to sit around on its laurels when someone else is venturing into new, uncharted territory.
Granted, it's not like China is going to be the first to land on the moon, but what if they get to the point where they're developing a moon colony or sending up as many reuseable spacecraft as we are? Is the US finally going to start shoveling money back into the space program?
This is the third launch of this series of spacecraft, not China's third launch. The "Shenzhou" craft started in 1999, but China first launched a satellite in 1970 and has launched dozens to date.
...the password there is ".seineew era snaciremA tsilatipaC"
Of course, one had to register before last September to get orbital elements from nasa. So, it's a bit misleading to claim that september had anything to do with it. This is a relatively September-agnostic sort of thing, which IIRC was implemented to keep people from hammering the servers.
Because Bill Clinton gave Loral (large campaign donner) Washington Post Story permission to sell this technology to our good friends the Chinese, they'll soon be able to deliver highly enriched Uranium right to your doorstep! The Democrats and Europeans think that playing defense is unsportsmanlike and that a shield is unnecessary. Thankfully Bush,Rumsfeld et al think differently and were are moving ahead on the project.
For some odd reason this reminds me of Airport Security vs. Cyborg Steve Mann, complete with a visual of Dr. Mann undergoing interrogation by some airport security lackeys, only to return home some days later with a bizarre, unbelievable story to show for the delay...
Andy
...has been forthcoming as to the identity of the dummy, but the Computing and Business worlds have their fingers crossed that it is Bernard Shifman.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
but after last September you need to register to get it...
Does this mean the terrorist factions have perfected use of the Tactical Long Range Spork Launcher?
We must guard our satellites.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
The Chinese should pay attention to the failures of the American and Russian manned space programs. Strict government control of access to space results in the loss of public interest and ultimately the reduction of the program to tasks that have been done over and over before. If the public knows that they will never have the chance to go themselves they will not support the program over other national priorities; even national pride only lasts for so long. If the Chinese were smart, they'd design their space program to be self-sustaining using the dollars of Western passengers right from the start. The line of people hoping to fly on the October Soyuz mission to ISS keeps growing; send some of them up. Design for a large number of paying passengers right from the start; create the volume market.
This is just an additional development showing China's growing strength. It's economy, based on PPP (purchasing power product, like GNP, but based on equivalent purchasing power instead of relying upon monetary conversions, as GNP does, is the second largest in the world (right behind the US -- 1996 estimate $4,047 billion international dollars, whereas the US had about $6,000 billion international dollars), and is growing much more rapidly than the US PPP -- about 8% a year. In not too long, China will surpass the US as the largest economy on the planet. And it still has a long ways to grow and improve. Eventually it will dwarf the US economy.
What then? China is destined to become the world's largest economy. We simply won't be able to compete in a full-out space race, on a dollar-per-dollar basis. As I see it, there are several possibilities. One is that we will focus our research efforts, much like some European nations have done, in order to excel. (Gran Sasso in Italy, for instance, is a leading high energy detector chamber for high-energy cosmic rays.) Or perhaps we will still manage to shine, simply because we attract better talent from around the world, and do better work with the limited resources available to us. Another possibility is that the US will forge closer ties with other nations -- in North America, Europe, and elsewhere, so that our economy will be able to compete with those of China, India, and Russia, once those nations get their acts together. Lastly, we may indeed be relegated to second (or lower) place on the world's stage, in space and other fields.
You take your pick.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
There's a very fine line between manned spaceflight and dropping nukes on your ideological counterparts. Not that it is imminent or anything but I'm sure China would be a little more comfortable with a mutually assured destruction scenario (as opposed to simply being a target on the US nuclear hit list).
Don't think for a second that club fed isn't keeping very close tabs on china's spaceflight program.
TSX
In case you're wondering, Eunuched and Un-manned are not the same thing.
--------------
I sig, therefore I was.
And China is 125th on that list, behind such economic powerhouses as Kazakhstan, Tonga, and Gabon.
China is interested in space flight as a method of improving their ICBMs. They could give a rat's ass about Mars.
Now the Russian space program has imploded, and we haven't done jack for 15 years. The space shuttle has been flying for longer than the time between when Alan Shepherd flew and when the first shuttle flight, because the American manned space program has become complacent. Oh, okay, I guess we did blow $60 billion on a big pressurized can in space that people can go up to learn how to fix. . . But seriously, imagine if the Chinese were to start a program to return to the moon, or to go to Mars -- would we still be wasting our time and money on scientifically useless porkbarreling in Earth orbit then?
For what it is worth, Shenzhou translates as Holy Vessel or Holy Ship.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
As you read this China's third unmanned (except for a dummy)
Ya gotta ask... nah it's too funny as it is.:)heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
And also on a related subject, I wonder if there any other significant technological advances which have or will come out of this manned space program (space-related or otherwise).
"WARNING!: U.S. Government Computer: If you are not authorized to access this system, disconnect now. You should have no expectation of privacy. By continuing, you consent to your keystrokes and data content being monitored. This message required by NASA GSFC CIO."
Translation: All your base are belong to us.
Perhaps the Chinese had the same problem and decided to spin the PR the same way.
However, I hope this is not true and look forward to welcoming China to the "Man in Space" club.
Of course, it would be nice to know that NASA is responding with the nanotube-based space elevator project or an orbital-speed railgun to allow undercutting China's prices by a factor of a few hundred and their own current pricing by a factor of a few thousand.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Whatever the Chinese are up to, it ain't ICBM building. They already have them.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Ummm, have you ever tried to install 2 sound cards or 2 video cards in Windows, or to be more specific, Windows XP? Starting with Windows 2000, you will find that they have built in support for dual video cards, sound cards etc.. Windows XP does have a lot of the "nicer" features of Linux, and the dual video cards/sound cards is one of them.
Counterparts are people 'like you'. IE, Mao was Castro's idiological counterpart. You should learn what words mean before using them.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
As opposed to the USA:
"They think that [Americans] are the culmination of evolution and that everything outside the [USA] is the wasteland of [wimps, terrorists and socialists]. I've spoken with [Americans] (in [the USA] who [loudly, obnoxiously and endlessly] told me that [Americans] were superior human beings. They already think they're number 1"
Good to see the USA finally getting some competition in the "country most thoroughly up itself" stakes...
I think they did.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
...Unless you think it'd be a good idea to shoot down foreign astronauts.
In case you're just tuning in, China can already "deliver highly enriched Uranium right to your doorstep".
http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/ch-war.htm
But this wasn't an ICBM test. This was "a manned space vessel"
Instead they're doing something progressive and forward looking, investing in science and technology. Perhaps they will agree to help fund or build the ISS.
Please keep your hate-mongering to yourself.
Sweat
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Anyways I think it's great the chinese are implementing a space program. The more the merrier, and the sooner we can get the heck off this planet the better :)
here
Note: all facts taken from CIA factbook http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index .html
Haven't we heard this before time and time again. The Japanese, the Germans, the EU, the Russians, etc, etc, etc. I remember back in the 80s when Japan was "taking over the world" and Americans were just lazy stupid people who would all soon be working for Japanese bosses. Hasn't turned out that way, eh?
First of all, remember that past economic growth is no indication of future growth. See dot com boom. Don't make the same mistake with other country's economies (or this one's). Secondly, every country has its own difficulties. China has serious internal stability problems to deal with (see Tienanmen Square). It still has a very large percentage of agriculture based workers, around 50%. The per capita GDP is only $3,600 (compared to $36,200 for US). Remember that with x4 the population of the US you have to spend x4 the resources feeding and clothing them. Finally, while they have over a billion people now it will be interesting to see what long term effects the "one-child" policy will have---especially if the vast majority of Chinese choose to have males.
Of course, they still may come up and kick our butts. But don't think it will be simple.
Brian Ellenberger
Steve Ballmer?
... what a shame.
That would be equivalent to sending up a monkey only I doubt there would be enough room for him to dance
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
(in the oops we just turned the Earth into a copy of Venus sense)
SDI does not, and cannot work, and here's why:
The change in the cost for an SDI system to increase its effectiveness is exponential, while the change in cost to defeat an SDI system is linear. Therefore, delta C (of SDI) is larger order than delta C (to defeat SDI). What this means is that the cost of an SDI system approaches infinity much faster than the cost of building nukes.
But how do I get these functions from you ask? simple.
Any ballistic missle counter measure is very expensive, because its technology (primarily guidance, but everything must be of much higher quality, you just can't afford failures) must be much much better than that of a ballistic missle. Therefore in order to reach, oh say 50% effectiveness (that is 50% of deployed countermeasures successfully neutralize their targets) you must spend far, far more on your countermeasures to defeat the enemies attack, than the attacker has to spend on his missles. Think about it in terms of computers, the guidance chip in a nuke can be equivelant to about a 386 and still be able to perform quite well, while an anti-ballistic missle unit needs at least an Athlon. Now consider the difference in cost between the two: the 386 costs maybe $5 now, while the Althon is over $200, thats exponential change in cost for you.
An attacker though, has only to launch more missles to neutralize your countermeasures.
So before you get all riled up to get into a nuke tossing war with someone, you need to think damn long and hard about what you consider acceptable losses, because anyway you slice it, if the US gets into a Nuke war, because we are going to lose several major cities, SDI or no.
You people need to realize that the only real hope to avoid such a situation is for the US to stop acting like a swaggering unilateral bull, and to start acting like a responsible citizen of the world. We must start solving the very real issues that face the world today or WWIII will happen. The primary issues are Overpopulation, coupled with the problem of food and water supply, and the substantial damage being done to the environment.
The earth is already pretty badly overpopulated (according to UN), currently that means that the amount of population over the sustainable population is causing immense damage to the ecosphere. It is eventually going to get so bad that we will see food riots, widespread cannabalism and all the Malthusian horrors. This is a path that leads invariably to war, probably the last war that will ever be fought on earth.
The US, and all the other major nations need to be acting now to counteract population growth and environmental damage, not wasting resources setting up a worthless missle defense system.
And to think, maybe someday China will be able to launch thier own pop star-whores into orbit.. We can only hope.
["Marge, I agree with you - in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory." - Homer]
No I don't understand:
You're going to be very tempted to nuke the USA before the system is in place and you lose the opportunity.
What would be the point of nuking the US before SDI was operational? We're still operating under MAD. If they were to launch a first strike now, they would only ensure their own destruction.
Safeguard was a bit before my time (60's?) but wasn't it designed to protect our ICBM's?
Folowing your argument that a defensive technology like SDI destablizes the world would suggest that we arm all the nations of the world with nukes so that all parties live in fear of the each other.
Make your ad hominem attacks all you like. Building a DEFENSIVE system is not jingoistic or xenophobic, it merely reflects the sad state of affairs that the proliferation of nukes and icbms is getting ready to explode (pun intentended) and not taking action to defend oneself is foolish idealism.
Oh, no!
You have fallen into the trap! The only aim of this spacepod-show was the slashdotting of NORAD! You have compromised US security.
Prepare to pay!
you dont know what you are talking about.
I am currently running 2 monitors on 2 different video cards on WinXP....I have been doing this for about 3 years since win98. I have tried multiple times to do multimonitor on X11 to no avail - seems you are (or at least were) limited to using 2 of the same video card. If one is AGP....well rules out that possibility. On XP/2000/98, if they're not the same card, not the same vendor, not the same chipset, No Problem! Multiple sound cards? Got it.....again built in support.
I do think that *NIX is overall better than Win. But if your gonna gripe about it, get your facts straight, and post in a story where its on topic.
Now, about this space launch. - Best kick in the butt I can see for NASA. And if Chinese can get reusable space vehicles and research into space stations going, well then the resulting competition would be a good thing for human aerospace development, much as if Microsoft was forced to have competition. (see how I worked that in by staying ontopic?)
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
When will we see "spacecraft in 24 hours"?
You were one of the ones who argued that the Pershing II's in Europe would be destabalizing.
More power to them. I guess pissing their money away on nonsense like that instead of feeding their people is one way of controlling the population.
What would be the point of nuking the US before SDI was operational? We're still operating under MAD. If they were to launch a first strike now, they would only ensure their own destruction.
Working ABM makes eventual destruction of the ABM-owning aggressive country's "enemies" inevitable, so MAD is not a sufficient deterrent -- whatever kind of destruction may happen at the moment when threat is apparent, is insignificant compared to offensive capabilities that will be used later, so it's safer to attack now and risk having large percentage of population destroyed, as opposed to be turned into a hole in the ground later.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The article is short on details, or perhaps it is classified, but it would be interesting to see how much the Chinese government is spending in this effort.
I am not saying the Chinese effort is comparable to what NASA has done, but if the Chinese have such a successful relatively cheap satellite business, I am guessing they are perhaps more economical in their program. Perhaps NASA can take a look and learn how to spend?
geek page at KY speaks
In case you all didn't notice NASA is becoming more of an exploration firm with less focus on near earth science and more on the Great Beyond. If our government does decide to increase NASA's budget in response to China then where would the money go? China is advancing in arenas where NASA is shedding and added monies to near Earth programs would be a step back methinks.
There are huge advantages to any nation that can dominate space. Remeber the rush for colonies in the 17 th century when mere continents were up for grabs. In the 21st century, ENTIRE planets can be up for grabs. Imagine being the sole owner of Mars. This does not even mention the asteroids composed of almost pure platinum or gold floating around in space. As well as being a planet killer, such an asteroid could be a very good source of raw materials. Needless to say, there is also the great cientific advances that will come from exploration. The first contact with an alien civilisation or even the discovery of alien life is also going to be discovered by the most advanced nation in the space race.
Yes. Slave labor is great for humankind
Not that I agree with this article's conclusion, but I think you should read this. If you won't give China a pass on this, why should you do it for the US?
--
Freeper Logic
Throw our DNA into space,along with a map,
Thats like an invitation to conquer earth.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
What would be the point of nuking the US before SDI was operational? We're still operating under MAD. If they were to launch a first strike now, they would only ensure their own destruction.
MAD only works against missile strikes since you have an identifiable enemy. What do you do if someone were to simply detonate nuclear weapons in a city? No launch detection or radar tracking letting you know exactly where the missiles came from and where they are going. (Useful for getting anyone like the US president either into a bunker or onto a plane heading away from the target as fast as possible.)
If it actually happened now the US would probably immediatly bomb Bagdad, only question would be Minuteman or Trident? Wonder if anyone dislikes both the US and Iraq...
Despite Chinese propaganda saying otherwise (and their use of Scientology-like "attack, never defend" philosophy in countering criticism of their government with criticism of ours), China's government is barbaric and tyrannical. And it seems to get worse with each iteration.
This current regime has raided and destroyed "unauthorized churches," putting believers in prison for the horrible crime of practicing "unauthorized religions," such as Christianity.
They routinely burn books, especially political and religious works.
After their stupid one-child policy fell flat on its face, they decided to implement even stricter forced-abortion and forced-sterilization policies that are barbaric, irregardless of any "overpopulation problem" (a myth perpetuated by a Chinese government unwilling to defend its insane agricultural policies or corrupt system of land/wealth 'redistribution').
Dissidents are either a) killed, b) jailed or c) sent to "re-education camps". Lovely.
The US is loony to continue to omit China from the "Axis of Evil," especially considering that *they* are the up and coming threat. Bullshit diplomacy aside, the Chinese government has grown increasingly beligerent in the past decade, proportional to the level of technology they've stolen/developed. To applaud their entry into space using US stolen technology is ridiculous, unless you stupidly have faith in Bush's crazy missile shield. When the next cold war starts see how fucking "cool" it seems when ICBMs are pointed at your city.
Spoken like a good party man. GNP, PPP, or whatever you want to call it per capita is paramount. If you don't have enough money to educate your citezens, you won't have science. Sure, you can build up a few elite institutions and educate thousands. If you are really good, you can even beat human nature and load those institutions with your best and brightest. Those efforts still can not compete with oportunities given millions, where the best and brightests can rise by merrit.
There can be no happiness without wisdom. There is no wisdom without free exchage of knowledge. There is no happiness in a state where politics trumps truth. We shall see where the Chinese go with their wealth. Comand economies tend to waste.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
America seems to have had uneasy relationships with China. As somebody interested in world peace I'd like us to be freinds.
But as someone who is interested in space travel, I'd like to see those relationships remain uneasy.
Since the last landing on the moon, no person has gone further then Earth's orbit.
I'd love to see the Chinese put a colony on Mars so our Government would get off it's rear and see space as something more then a place to park satilites.
The Internet is generally stupid
It's amazing what you can do in a comand economy where you own the press. Convi^H^H^H^H Agent Yu would never know the difference, and what he thinks is unimportant. There is no truth without independent thrird party verification.
To get a brief introduction to such horrors, check out "The Russian Centruy" by Barnes and Noble press. It's so bad that you want to dismiss it as propaganda, but there's so much that you can't. First hand accounts pile up on each other, each more terrible than the next, to support sweeping descriptions of mass murder, incompetence, waste, corruption, greed and indiference. The photos really bring home the scale and horror. Hundreds of cultures, were subsumed and nothing is so depressing as the bits of humanity that shine out from each picture. Smiles and triumphs of the suffering and doomed are more haunting than pictures of ruined churches and dead people.
So as this rocket wizzes overhead, let us remember the horror that launched it. Forced labor, institutionalized atheism, idealology at gunpoint, "universal" education, intense secret police monitoring and all the other hallmarks of Communist super states are at work. You won't really know how bad things are until it's over and even then you will be left wondering. The truth is allways worse than honest people suspect.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The chinese pavillon at the Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany (held at the same fairground as CeBIT) displayed, among other strange things, a model scene of a chinese moon lander, complete with little figures planting the red flag into the moon dust. At least chinese PR folks must be serious about this.
To put this into context, the whole pavillon had a somewhat strange atmosphere -- the interior was all-metal, very futuristic, like something from a 1960s low-budget science fiction movie. In little booths at the side of one room you could play around with interactive presentations dealing with all kinds of subjects concerning China. I remember that the presentation emphasised China's power and potential compared to the rest of the world. It was all about big, hero-type projects like the Three Gorges dam and other huge engineering feats.
Compared to this, there was a display featuring a large amount of green bottle glass shards arranged to look like a forest, if I remember correctly. I could not figure out what it was about -- probably because some of the labels, even though notionally in a language that I should be able to understand (like German or English) must have been written by the people who wrote consumer electronics manuals for asian products a couple of years ago.
Strange feelings abounded in that place, and we left it right away to look at friendlier venues like the Finnish pavillon.
-- H. Wilker
Who cares if they aren't manned
I care. And i'm not alone.
The Internet is generally stupid
The cheery attitude most of you have towards Chinese advancement is astonishing. Jiang builds China's wealth just like every other evil dictator has, by holding guns to workers' heads and telling them to toil and hand over the fruits of their labor graciously, or be imprisoned or shot. Farm communities in China that barely harvest enough to feed the village have their harvests snatched away for purposes of 'redistribution', which really means export for money through dummy companies, money that does not come back to Chinese farmers but instead gets cycled into the military or royal coffers. Because of this, the youth, who normally would work on the farms, go to factory work instead because there they are paid pittance which can buy food, food that Chinese should have already because they farmed it. Farms in China are just like the Matrix, "copper tops" for the government to abuse for cash purposes, and they have the side effect of forcing all youth to work in factories making textiles and machinery where they are not paid enough to keep their families alive. THIS is the money that is funding China's great space program, this money that has been washed in the blood of the citizens of China, money got through a bad system of forced indenture. And if you dare suggest that in China the penalty will be far worse than a mod to Flamebait or Troll, you will be chucked in jail and then either killed or sent to a concentration camp where your love of the Chinese government will be 'reinforced' through torture and brain-washing.
And mistaking China's ambition for exploratory curiosity is a deadly mistake. Chinese rulers above all else are charged with the goal of unifying China at all costs, and that is what they strive for. The Hong Kong treaty expiration was great motivation, now China is pushing hard internally to get Taiwan once and for all. And once they get it they will treat it like Macau and Tibet, 'cleansing' it of unauthorized religions and beliefs through force of bullets, and then they will treat it like Hong Kong, twisting the fruits of its capitalism to serve greater China, forcing immediate socialism. This is the goal of China's space program. They want to be able to hit other continents with nuke missiles, or at least aim them. So next time they make land-grabs all around them, they do not have to fear retaliation from those countries' allies, because they do not think a nuclear war will ever be started over Taiwan.
I am sorry for my multiple postings before expressing rage, but this is how I see it because I lived on a farm, I worked in a factory, and I am now a refugee because of my political views. China cannot have it both ways, they cannot keep sending students to America to learn technology while expecting them to dutifully return and put their knowledge to use for the furthering of China's goals. They cannot expect us to see freedom and then return to the bosom of terror voluntarily and without criticism. This is impossible. And I will criticize the policies of China until my last breath, because I know their true motives. Do not be fooled by their public speech. There is a concept in China, of inner and outer, where one face is presented to strangers while another is preserved for family. This is how it is. China presents nice outer face for world community, while inner face, presented to Chinese, is snarling and mean and cruel and hard. Do not be fooled. Do not support China and its race into space. They do not mean to explore, they only mean to gain new advantage to further abuse power here on Earth.
... so then Bush would start launching our elite forces in outer space. Maybe Nasa could doodle some cave holes on the craters of Mars... I'm sure we would have a special op team there in a few months to erradicate any possible martian terrorists.
Live web cams
Perhaps the Chinese will find economic ways of sending people into space instead of NASA bloat-ware which costs a half-billion per shuttle launch ($100 million per person). It would take 500 people a year paying what Tito and the N'SYNC guy are paying to fund NASA's bloated program.
I have no idea why this image came to mind, but I just have to share it. To blazes with my karma points!
;-)
The capsule whizzes by at fairly low altitude and relatively low speed during reentry. Suddenly, as it passes over, say, San Francisco (or anywhere else with lots of hard flat surfaces and tall buildings), a port opens on the bottom and out drop about five thousand superballs in all their hyperkinetic glory! (and all kinds of designer colors).
I leave the results to the imagination of the readership.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Now that there are several companies launching satelites, who manages the space? Realisticly, there are a limited number of spots for geosynchronous satelites and they are nearly full. Plus, satelites orbits aren't perpetual (solar wind, collisions with space junk, resistance from the thin but significant atmosphere). Does someone have the right, by treaty (ratified by all "space" countries) to allocate space and lay down "safety" codes? Does anyone supervise the landing of old satelites?
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
Have you heard anything about this news? It was news to me when I read it a couple days ago in the Post, but apparently all the rosey economic news that's been coming from China the last few years is starting to smell a bit fishy.
America is unable to prevent thousands of kilos of heroin being smuggled in from outside despite billions of dollars pumped into border surveillance, intelligence and tracking.
Now imagine if China really wanted to destroy the US...smuggle in a few kilos of enriched uranium via the usual routes (hell, sniffer dogs can't detect it, and you could press it into thin wafers to look just like you're bringing home your CD collection from a recent trip to China so those X-ray boys won't notice a thing). Melt it down, make some bombs and then melt down some major cities.
So fuck you you short-sighted militaristic bastards. I've just defeated your multi-billion dollar SDI defense program with a good thought exercise, some good planning and some dedicated terrorists.
US & SDI: 0
Dedicated nuclear terrorists and suppliers: 60,000,000
You shouldn't still be using hockey sticks when the game changes to baseball.
And besides, those multi-billion dollars you spend on your defense programmes would be more efficient in preventing home casualties if they were invested in those nations that want to attack you at present.
9/11 didn't happen because of love.
-Nano.
"2) This "space program" is a thinly-disguised ruse. China is trying to maneuver itself into a two-front cold war, for many reasons, not the least of which is Taiwan.
No, that's the last thing they want. As it stands now the People's Army would have their heads handed to them by Taiwanese forces even without US intervention. Such is the price of not being able to trust your military.
On top of that all of their economic reforms are very expensive both in terms of money and public morale. They simply couldn't afford a nuclear arsenal much bigger than their current (paltry) stockpile, let alone something that could match the US arsenal (with our without the warheads we're putting into storage).
While China does need some sort of rivalry with the US in order to give itself a sense of purpose and importance, they have to make sure to do it in a way that that doesn't piss us off too much. Look at how quiet they've gotten suddenly after our newly declared war on terrorism.
Although it is good to see another country join the space community, this does have some serious side effects for us. This is how the cold war started between the US and the USSR. If they can launch something into orbit then they have ICBM capability. Maybe there is more behind Pres. Bush's missle defence program than we thought. At the risk of sounding paranoid, what does he know that we don't? Anyway... maybe now China can significantly contribute to the ISS in the ways of launch vehicles and re-supply missions.
"I've figured out what's wrong with life: It's other people." -Dilbert
I was gooing to reply to this too, as it is one of my pet peeves, for exactly the reasons you stated. It is sort of a double negative, and is not correct, in spite of common usage.
Three Rivers has already been nuked by the greedy sons-a-bitches that decided we needed two new stadiums despite the fact that the people of Pittsburgh opposed the idea.
One is on the boosters used and the other is on the Shenzhou spaceship and other space projects
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
And yet the nations do not care to. Which means it is up to individuals.
Would you care to put in the effort to, say, get the only lunar mining/processing/construction colony up and running? Big effort, yes, but also big rewards if done properly...
No, that goes to the most advanced nation in radio astronomy and signal processing.
(Of course, depending on what they're saying, said nation could end up with a decent technological lead to boot :)
And don't make fun of them for gassing it up and lighting it off empty to test it. As related in a story on my web site, that's how NASA did it until the shuttle. And the only reason they didn't do it with the shuttle was because that system is so complex it couldn't be completely automated.
Soyuz was the manned part of the Russian's moon program, the part that actually worked. They've been using it with various improvements since the mid-60s. Makes you wonder, if NASA hadn't sold Nixon on the shuttle (New Tech! New Jobs!), would we still be flinging people into orbit using Apollo capsules and Saturn IB variants today?
AMCGLTD.COM. Where cats, science fictio
It is a development of a federation of European states into a far more powerful entity, similar to the federation of the original 13 colonies to form the USA.
Not quite. Unlike the 13 American colonies, the member nations of the EU don't share a common language or cultural/ideological background. Even with these advantages, the US fought a civil war; what makes you think that the member nations of the EU will function well w/ each other, given the quantity and quality of their differences?
Gross National Product matters. The amount of money per person is IRRELEVANT. You are ignoring a very important and very basic fact - money is not distributed equally.
Those few "elite" institutions are more than enough considering the middle class of India alone is far larger than the entire US. China has of course an even bigger middle class, so both nations can easily educate millions of citizens.
It's also important to note that both these countries posess a large engineering base, a highly educated population, and have already registered *DECADES* of better than 5% growth.
The Chinese economy is far more capitalist than command. No nation on this planet has matched the increase in living standards, literacy and per capita income that the chinese have achieved since the 1950s. Only Japan and South Koera comes close.
Did not the German scientists come to the USA because the German government was killing them? (Jews, etc.)
Got the scoop at http://dot.kde.org
What do you do if someone were to simply detonate nuclear weapons in a city?
Missile-defense isn't designed to protect against this... only missiles. Your argument is like:
"That front airbag won't protect me from a side-on collision."
You're arguing against something entirely different.
No sig for you.
If the potential attacker is aggressive enough to build working missle defense, there is no possible outcome that it will tolerate the existence of its "enemies" at all -- in this case the time is on the side of the country that built the defense first. Therefore playing for time is pointless, it's better to destroy the future aggressor at any cost.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
That's ridiculous. The goal of aggression is to force people to do what you want, not to kill them. Killing is only done to set an example or eliminate a threat. Aggressive nations *need* enemies to exploit.
Decisions to start a war are made by governments, not by collections of all individuals. Certainly governments will defend their own survival/independence/...
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yes, and suicide is incompatible with that goal! Your argument would make sense if the country without the defense were starting from a position of superiority, where it could wipe out the opposing country and still survive.
"Superiority" and "complete destruction" are myths -- certainly something will survive even a global nuclear war, it just would really, really suck compared to what mankind is/was for the most of its history. And certainly that, pretty bad by any measure, situation would be still better than what countries may expect to be turned into by a sufficiently aggressive opponent, acting with guaranteed impunity -- if nuclear war's results have limits, human cruelty and stupidity don't.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
There are a lot of countries where infrastructure was at some point destroyed, yet they exist. And it's hard to kill _everybody_ in the government -- "government" is usually a large number of organizations, not just top-level institutions that are associated with the word "government" for most of people.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The purchasing power in this specific case is how much the russians had to be paid to buy their Soyuz technology. The Russians have accepted payment in truckloads of Chinese produced products before, but I would guess in this case they wanted some hard currency. But probably not that much relative to the cost of development. I would guess in the range of USD500M to 2 Billion. For development that would have cost USD7-12Billion in the US (just for the launch system and more for the manned capsule tech and probably did cost the Russians more to develop)
e lvs/soyuz_s pecs.shtml
r e comparable to the Atlas IV, Delta IV and Soyuz in launch capability. The costs for launching the Atlas and Delta have been 2-3 times more than the Soyuz and LongMarch. o gy / tlas_delta_020320-2.html
The internal China costs are how much China pays for its own space tech engineers. Probably 1/2 to 1/5 the cost of Nasa engineers.
Here is a site with specs comparing different launch vehicles.
http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/
The new longmarch 2E and 2F
http://www.cgwic.com/launch/vehicles-3.htm
a
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technol
With the chinese program being a more robustly funded program than what the Russians have had. It appears that the Chinese have and will be able to use a combo of internal development to get a manned program and well funded Mir-like station (perhaps even a more advanced version) at a fraction of the cost of the ISS and Mir.
Yes, there are military applications, motivations and political reasons, but the Chinese appear to be close to getting the most economically obtained manned program.
If they can meet objectives they will get 100% time on on a 3-4 person new Mir like station in about 2005 for an estimated $4-6Billion. I think some of the ISS partners would be willing to make a trade their 0.5%-3% of ISS time for the same.
Plus they have launch systems that are far more reliable and capable than what they had before. They will be able to launch there own and other business satellites (as well as their own military ones).
The main lesson should be that for space development a steady commitment, prudent economic choices and using what works is better than pushing technology and choices that do not make sense. (Shuttle - expensive tech for re-use when that re-use choice did not save money, ISS- making a station involving dozens of launches to assemble over many years).
A better managed program, steady long-term commitment and buying affordable tech is the way to go.