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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.
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.
...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.
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.
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
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?)
Oh yes. Per capita GNP. The same measure that Luxembourg beats the US out on. By almost a factor of 2, as well. Over $45,000 per capita for Luxembourg versus a bit over $28,000 for the US. I suppose that makes Luxmberourg the world's most powerful economy in the world.
Seriously though, the buying power of an economy is jointly determined by both the total PPP and PPP per capita. But when it comes to research expenditures, the total size of the economy is what is important. If you can afford to spend a few percent of your economy on research, the total PPP is what is most important. The PPP per capita is also important, but its importance issecondary -- it is related to how much your citizens can afford to be taxed, and so is related to the percent of your total PPP which you can afford to allocate towards research.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
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!
Sure -- I always surf the web with telnet; doesn't everyone?
Living better through chemicals
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
(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.
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!
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.
Absolute size of the economy is all that matters. If per capita was important, Switzerland would have a far better space program than India.
At one time the country with the highest PCGNP was was Kuwait... Because of having a lot of high value exports, small population and a very wide gap between rich and poor.
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
Yet another cultural misconception. Southern China places a big emphasis on rice grains, but the climate is way too dry in the north to grow it as a grain. Wheat, as a result is the predominant grain. Chinese cusine is divided into 4 big regions, corresponding to the 4 directions on the compass, each with its own unique charactersitics. Historically a lot of dried (and reconstituted) ingredients are used in cooking - stuff like mushrooms, cloud ears, bamboo shoots, shark fins, etc, so it'd be REALLY intresting to see what they come up with for "Space food". Hopefully it'll beat freeze-dried pizza at the Exploratorium :-)
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.
Who cares if they aren't manned
I care. And i'm not alone.
The Internet is generally stupid
Um ... I think I'm just going to let that statement sit out there all by its lonesome, without any additional commentary whatsoever. Nope. Nothing to add to that one at all, folks.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.
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.
"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.
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...
>
>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 you say with irony, I say with conviction.
I'd prefer that the first lunar colony be American.
But if America decides it wants nothing to do with space, I'd much rather have a Chinese space programme than no space programme at all.
(All of which, frankly, is moot; I agree with the poster who said that the main motivation is for the Chinese to demonstrate their ballistic missile capability.)
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.