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Space Shuttle Spy Gets 15 Years
goG writes "A Chinese-born engineer was sentenced Monday to more than 15 years in prison for hoarding sensitive information about the US space shuttle with the intent of giving it to China. US District Judge Cormac Carney called Chung's crimes a matter of national security, saying he had committed a breach against the trust Boeing and the country had placed in him. Attorney Greg Staples said, 'The [People's Republic of China] is bent on stealing sensitive information from the United States and shows no sign of relenting. Only strong sentences offer any hope of dissuading others from helping the PRC get that technology.' Staples also 'noted in sentencing papers that Chung amassed a personal wealth of more than $3 million US while betraying his adopted country.'"
...but let the Chinese have the secrets and dump money into their program. We were getting out of the Shuttle program anyway because it is outdated and has enormous cost. At $700+ million per launch, why not just let the Chinese waste a little money?
...but I've known quite a few Chinese Americans, both from the mainland and from Taiwan, who despite having become citizens here seem to be more concerned about their former homeland than their new one. I remember when the American spy plane had the collision with the Chinese fighter jet in 2001, almost every Chinese person I knew, despite being US citizens, was adamant that the US should apologize. During the Tibet unrest, many Chinese Americans I know accused the US media of bias--begging the question why they care so much about how China is portrayed if they're now Americans. Maybe this is no different than past waves of immigrants, and maybe it's no different than some Jewish Americans (even born here) who show more support for Israel than they do for the US. It's also no different than Muslim immigrants to Europe who show more allegiance to their religion and the ummah than their adopted nations. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see if anyone else had any thoughts or experiences in this matter. In short, in today's world, what are the real loyalties of an immigrant population? This story obviously shows one--money--but the question is whether there's anything beyond that.
A funny thing happened in the 60's during the development of Concorde, the USSR was of course spying on the Europeans as they were also workin gon their supersonic Tupolev. One of the (numerous) big issues was that of the rubber with which to make the tyres, as it had to be solid enough to resist the speed and whatnot. In a documentary from 99, one of the European engineers said they had noticed spies collecting material on runways after tests, so they created a sort of unusable goo and pasted it on the runways for them to collect. He said he'd have given anything to see the Russians' faces while trying to make sense of the stuff to create tyres with it...
I don't think the Shuttle is terrible It just should have been replaced. It has been flying for about 30 years now.
Building a more modern Shuttle. I would would really like to see that. The X-33 was supposed to be a shuttle replacement but it got canned for what I think where not good reasons.
Also you don't want to boost the shuttle farther. What you want is a space tug that takes payloads higher. That was supposed to be part of the shuttle program but it got canceled.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Terrible reasons actually... If they had just decided to use Aluminum tanks instead of the(at the time) troublesome composite tanks they could have had the X-33 flying...
Way too heavy. The whole X-33 project depended on a bunch of exotic technologies simultaneously succeeding. Linear aerospike, metallic heat shield "tiles", exotically structural materials... May as well have bet the farm on a warp drive and computer AI, too.
Reusable SSTO does not appear to be technologically or economically viable at this time. Its like demanding Christopher Columbus wait until he can fly a supersonic Concorde across the pond instead of using his wooden sailboats.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger