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..."

Images from today's launch

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceRef has images [spaceref.com] from China television on today's launch.

China's had spaceflight since the 1970s

[gadfium]

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.

OIG Registration

[Tom Rothamel]

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.

Nothing to do with SDI...

[sweatyboatman]

...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

Re:The real question is:

[jsse]

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?

Checked. It's "People Republic of China", no made in China. Well, actually, not much things in China has labeled with their origin, in case you don't know.

OMFG, you're insane

[cadallin451]

It is your kind of attitude that is going to lead to WWIII, which is, by the way, A BAD THING.

(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.

Re:rumor from the old days

[ender81b]

These stories where all hoaxes. For more information I suggest you read this [rocketry.com] which explains the origins/myths of the so-called 'phantom cosmonauts'