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China Starts Developing Hybrid Hypersonic Spaceplane (popsci.com)
hackingbear quotes a report from Popular Science: While SpaceX is making news with its recoverable rockets, China announced that it is working on the next big thing in spaceflight: a hypersonic spaceplane. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is beginning advanced research on a high tech, more efficient successor to the retired Space Shuttle, with hybrid combined cycle engines combining turbofan, ramjet, scramjet and rocket engines, that can takeoff from an airport's landing strip and fly straight into orbit. CASTC's rapid research timeline also suggests that the reports in 2015 of a Mach 4 test flight for a recoverable drone testbed for a combined cycle ramjet/turbofan engine were accurate. And China also has the world's largest hypersonic wind tunnel, the Mach 9 JF-12, which could be used to easily test hypersonic scramjets without costly and potentially dangerous flight testing at altitude. Its nearest competitor, the British Skylon in contrast uses pre-cooled jet engines built by Reaction Engines Limited to achieve hypersonic atmospheric flight, as opposed to scramjets. Both spacecraft will probably first fly around the mid 2020s.
China hasn't stolen anything.
You commented on China obtaining secret ideas. I don't see a problem with that. After all, information wants to be free.
Also, the countries China has taken information from still have the information and ideas. By the typical definition of stealing used here, China didn't steal them. I keep reading that piracy isn't stealing because the content producer still has the content, but unauthorized comments have been made. China may have pirated ideas, but they sure didn't steal them.
I also keep reading that piracy is justified when the content owner doesn't distribute content in a particular region. If the secret information and ideas weren't shared with China, surely they were justified in pirating it. It really is no different than pirating a song or movie that the author or distributor doesn't make available in the country I live in. If that type of piracy is acceptable, so is what China did. It really isn't anything different.
China hasn't stolen any secrets. They pirated the secret information and ideas, and they were justified in committing the piracy. You're wrong to complain about China.
We're been dreaming about this ever since the 70ies. I remember as a Kid - both my father and grandpa worked for and with Nasa - seeing the SÃnger concepts.
We'd leapfrog SpaceX if this would finally happen, but I'm not holding my breath. This is difficult. Really difficult. But cool if the chinks can make it happen. Two thumbs up for the attempt.
My 2 Eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca