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Satellite Spots China's First Aircraft Carrier
Hugh Pickens writes "Commercial satellite company DigitalGlobe Inc. has announced that it has an image of the People's Republic of China's first functional aircraft carrier, taken during the carrier's first sea trials in the Yellow Sea. The carrier was originally meant for the Soviet navy, but its construction was halted as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and engineers in the Ukraine disarmed it and removed its engines before selling it to China in 1998 for $20 million. The vessel, an Admiral Kuznetsov class aircraft carrier measuring 304.5 meters long, and having a displacement of 58,500 tons, has been refitted for research and training in China. The Ministry of National Defense says the steam-powered aircraft carrier has completed all refitting and testing work as scheduled after its first sea trial in mid-August, and was heading back out to sea for additional scientific research and experiments. According to Andrew S. Erickson at the US Naval War College, China's long term strategic dilemma is whether to focus on large-deck aviation or on submarines (PDF)."
The US uses steam catapults, which are even better but are more expensive and are fairly involved to design.
Better to have your nose straight at Vstall, than have your angle of attack inclined at Vstall. Ski-jumps don't work for heavier ASW/AWACS aircraft, and they deprie you of landing space for helicopters.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The US uses steam catapults, which are even better but are more expensive and are fairly involved to design.
Ford class carriers (2 currently under construction) will use magnetic launch rather than steam launch.
Reagan-class aircraft carriers.
Such a thing does not exist. The new class of carrier is Ford class. The USS Ronald Reagan is Nimitz class.
The ford is designed with more powerful nuclear reactors to provide for the magnetic launchers, and potentially rail guns and directed energy weapons. Yes. This will be bad-ass.
Russia operates Mig-29s and Su-33s off of carriers with ski jumps - and the Su-33 is heavier than a Superhornet.
The USMC also doesn't use a ski jump for it's AV-8B carrier platforms, despite that aircraft operating very well off of the UKs (now retired), Indian and Italian ski jump equipped carriers. It's an operational decision taken by US military planners rather than a limitation with the design, as the RAF GR.7 and GR.9s could launch with a heavier weight than the Marines aircraft because of that ski jump.
Not exactly. The Soviet Union classified them as aviation cruiser for treaty reasons (Montreux Convention, 1936: aircraft carriers aren't allowed through the Dardanelles). At about 65,000 tons full load, it's larger than the French de Gaulle and roughly equivalent the the Royal Navy's planned carriers.
Russia operates Mig-29s and Su-33s off of carriers with ski jumps - and the Su-33 is heavier than a Superhornet.
But they can't be loaded to full weight when launching off a ramp. they needs to be either light on armament or be air refueled.
Smaller carriers that only use VSTOL aircraft could benefit from a ski jump, I don't know why it hasn't been implemented there.
Also more efficient. I think they're around 20% efficient, compared to steam catapults that only manage ~2% efficiency. They're also far easier to control: You can have a controlled acceleration instead of a huge acceleration that quickly drops, launch smaller, lighter stuff (a steam catapult won't work at "half power", so if you tried to launch an UAV, it would be ripped apart by the catapult operating at full power). Of course, the coolness of any object is automatically improved by adding magnets, so you get that added bonus.
The USS Nimitz was named after Flt. Adm. Chester Nimitz who died in 1966 and is the only US military vessel ever to be named after him so far as I can find. A single vessel doesn't make for a tradition.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I suspect part of the reduced stress comes from not having most of the acceleration at the start, as the magnetic rail allows for the same amount of force to be applied along the whole distance.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Learn some fucking facts. Seriously.
The US debt is a little over 15T(Trillion). China holds 1.134T. That's 7.5%
China holds a meager 7.5% SEVEN POINT FIVE PERCENT of the US debt. That's it. Japan, the next highest creditor, holds 6.4%.
The grand total of all foreign debt is 4.6T. That's 30% of all the US debt.
Foreign countries -- all of them -- hold THIRTY PERCENT of the US Debt. The rest is owed to the US, either to the Federal Reserve or the US public.
Here are the stats on foreign ownership of the US debt.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Having been in the Navy for 14 years I do not see China being able to operate a carrier effectively for a decade at least. First you need to have planes an pilots that can land on one, then you have to be learn how to replenish at sea (*not* an easy task), then you need a grunch of ships and submarines to protect the carrier, not to mention operations for achieving that, and of course the entire logistics and training infrastructure to pull the whole thing off.
The Ukrainians are pissed about that because they were a regular old country called Ukraine until the Soviets took them over and converted them into a region rather than a state. It was an emasculation of sorts, and when they got their autonomy back, they preferred to be called by the correct name. Same thing with Yukon in Canada. "The Yukon" was a region, and then it became the Province of Yukon, or just Yukon.