China Now Launches More Rockets Than Anyone In the World (arstechnica.com) 65
Last year, China set a goal of 35 orbital launches and ended up with 39 launch attempts. "This year, China is set to pace the world again," reports Ars Technica. "Through Sunday, the country has launched 27 orbital missions, followed by Russia (19), and the United States (16). Although nearly a month and a half remain in this year, a maximum of six additional orbital launches are likely from the United States in 2019." From the report: To be fair, China's space launch program has not been without hiccups. The country's space program is still trying to bring its large Long March 5 vehicle back into service after a catastrophic failure during just its second mission, in July 2017. And the country had three failures in 2018 and 2019, compared to just one in the United States and Russia combined.
The United States has taken a step back this year in part due to decreased activity by SpaceX. The company launched a record 21 missions last year but has so far launched 11 rockets in 2019. A flurry of missions remains possible in the next six weeks for the company, including a space station resupply mission in early December, a commercial satellite launch, and additional Starlink flights. Another big factor has been a slow year for United Launch Alliance. The Colorado-based company has launched just two Delta IV-Medium rockets this year, one Delta IV-Heavy, and a single Atlas V mission. The company may launch Boeing's Starliner spacecraft before the end of 2019, giving the Atlas V rocket a second launch. It is possible that Rocket Lab, which has flown its Electron rocket from New Zealand five times in 2019 and is planning at least one more mission before the end of the year, will have more launches than United Launch Alliance for the first time. Sometime next year, Rocket Lab should also begin to add to the US tally for orbital launches as it opens a new facility at Wallops Island, Virginia.
The United States has taken a step back this year in part due to decreased activity by SpaceX. The company launched a record 21 missions last year but has so far launched 11 rockets in 2019. A flurry of missions remains possible in the next six weeks for the company, including a space station resupply mission in early December, a commercial satellite launch, and additional Starlink flights. Another big factor has been a slow year for United Launch Alliance. The Colorado-based company has launched just two Delta IV-Medium rockets this year, one Delta IV-Heavy, and a single Atlas V mission. The company may launch Boeing's Starliner spacecraft before the end of 2019, giving the Atlas V rocket a second launch. It is possible that Rocket Lab, which has flown its Electron rocket from New Zealand five times in 2019 and is planning at least one more mission before the end of the year, will have more launches than United Launch Alliance for the first time. Sometime next year, Rocket Lab should also begin to add to the US tally for orbital launches as it opens a new facility at Wallops Island, Virginia.
Well, information is factually free. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anglophones came up with the concept of making the crime of an imaginary artificial scarcity monopoly on information for the purpose of running a protection racket, so one can steal money from both fans and creatives without actually working, a legally protected (but physically impossible to enforce) privilege.
Doesn't mean the rest of the planet have to play along. And surely, if you accept that invalid "intellectual property" logic, then I can "pay" your worthless copies with worthless copies too!
I got thi
Re: Well, information is factually free. (Score:1)
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Re:Well, information is factually free. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Well, information is factually free. (Score:2)
Anglophones came up with the concept...
Translation: "Linguists be all philosophical an' shit..."
Or something (but yeah; probably not that).
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> concept of making the crime of an imaginary artificial scarcity monopoly on information for the purpose of running a protection racket
That's an odd way of saying the original inventor should be given credit and attempt to enable him to keep inventing new things.
> Doesn't mean the rest of the planet have to play along.
It's ok to steal the work of others and deny them the benefits of their work because you don't like those people.
You're a dick.
Re: Not again (Score:2)
Coming up with good, original ideas generally runs contrary to the conformist, homogeneous nature of East Asian cultures...
Long march? (Score:1)
More like Bataan death march.
Aka US presidential election. ;)
Re:Thanks to the rest of the world (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, only the USA should be allowed to be a "threat".
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We are both jerks in different ways.
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Umm, what? All but one of the major wars/revolutions of the last 20 years was either carried out, promoted by, or supported by the US. Generally we're supporting the most vile of the combatants in any ongoing conflict as well, and doing our best to destabilize any Third World country that has resources and a government that wants to use them for the good of its people. This shit has to stop.
Re: Thanks to the rest of the world (Score:1)
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> The US has had the most idiotic new-con interventionist foreign policy going back to 1988
You could actually argue it goes back to Wilson [wikipedia.org]. He really championed the policy of interventionism to promote American idealism for the first time. At that time, colonialism was declining in sentiment with the American public because of the Philippians.
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My objection is more to our nasty habit of picking pretty much the worst possible people, then funding and/or arming them to create conflict in otherwise peaceful locations. Admittedly Obama/Clinton were much better at that than Rump, but then their entire team was an order of magnitude more competent than his. (Never thought I'd see the day when a stint in the White House would be seen as a resume stain.)
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Your posts says that Obama/Clinton picked the worst people to associate with, and then claim their team was more competent.
Did you think about that before posting it?
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Ah, you're assuming that their goals were benevolent rather than world domination. Common mistake to make.
They put neo-Nazis in charge of Ukraine, ripping them out of the alliance with Russia that they were moving towards.
They allied us with Al Qaeda when Libya looked like it was going to move away from the petro-dollar while financing a pan-Africa currency.
They supported a military coup in Honduras and called it "restoring democracy" when it looked like the country was going to raise the minimum wage and
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Go back in time and talk to Richard Nixon about it.
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It has been a while since Nixon was President. Things change.
Nixon supported the normalization of relations with China to pull them away from the Soviet Union. The remains of the Soviet Union no longer a serious concern. In fact, it probably makes more sense to normalize relations with the ex Soviet states as a buttress against China at this point.
Wrong article (Score:2)
Sorry, I thought it was going to be actually informative about successfull Chinese space program,
like mentioning what they are launching, details of institutes actually creating launchers and engines,
specifics about their upcoming plans, maybe even brief interview from leader or engineer involved.
Oh well, at least they managed to spend almost half the article on old news about US space industry,
which was only #3 space launching country while #2 Russia not even worth a mention like New Zealand was.
Gotta keep
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Nah, it's sensationalist crap.
Besides, Elon Musk will soon be launching more than that per month.
(No doubt Donald Trump will claim credit for that and all his supporters will cheer. So it goes...)
Re: Wrong article (Score:2)
...and all his supporters will cheer.
I'm no Trump fan; what little good his administration [pretends] to stand for (trade protectionism, the 2nd Amendment) as well as against (i.e. the politically-correct insanity pervading the landscape) is more than offset by everything else (repealing EPA regs, betraying the Kurds, letting us be Israel's bitch, etc). That having been said, I've heard a hell of a lot more about "Trump supporters" from obsessed haters than I have from his supposed supporters themselves...
Re: Wrong article (Score:2)
Re: You cared (Score:1)
Chandrayaan-2 from India .. (Score:2)
.. to the Moon!
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Amen, bro.
not even close (Score:4, Insightful)
The Gaza Strip don't get the same altitude but they've got the Chinese well beaten on numbers.
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The Gaza Strip don't get the same altitude but they've got the Chinese well beaten on numbers.
...and the Israelis have gotten Hamas well beaten on volume with their return fire and they kill way more civilians with it than Hamas rocketeers and the Chinese space program do combined. But now let's have you explain to us why you are dragging this into a discussion about Chinese rocket launces??
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No, let's not.
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No, let's not.
So you are a troll ... figures.
Re: not even close (Score:1)
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Sigh, what the fuck is with the idiots that have to make everything about race, let alone about Jewish people.
Stop it. You're being silly.
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As the summary mentions, it's orbital launches. Sub-orbital doesn't count.
Otherwise you have to include things like fireworks and China probably still wins. I don't know, which country consumes the most fireworks?
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Otherwise you have to include things like fireworks and China probably still wins. I don't know, which country consumes the most fireworks?
Ah, but then you've got to differentiate between rockets and mortars...
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What country has the most red rockets?
Asking for my dog.
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If they got dirt on Hunter, maybe they can get funding to go higher.
Good for China, but temporary (Score:3)
SpaceX's launch cadence will need to pick up early next year to meet the FCC requirement to deploy all 14,000 Starlink satellites in the next few years.
We'll see at least ten Falcon 9 launches next year just to establish minimal operations (600 satellites). Unless Starship/Heavy suddenly becomes production-ready we'll be seeing hundreds of Falcon 9 launches over the next few years to build the constellation (60 birds per launch). If Starship does become ready sooner that number can be reduced by 7x.
And then there is Commercial Crew, ISS resupply, and commercial launch missions. Plus a few customers still prefer to buy from ULA. Maybe Bezos will even have a working product to show.
Re: Good for China, but temporary (Score:2)
Maybe Bezos will even have a working product to show.
Hopefully a genuine Blue Origin rocket motor will utilize a different SKU than the knockoffs...
China missile capability too (Score:2)
Number of launches vs satellites in orbit? (Score:2)
I wonder how those numbers would compare when instead of number of launches you go with number of satellites/mass to orbit? A lot of US/European launches have switched to multiple satellites per launch, Ariane 5 rarely launches with less than 2 payloads per flight and SpaceX put 120 satellites into orbit this year with two rockets alone. If n2yo.com is to be believed 590 satellites globally (cube and up) have been launched this year, if my numbers are correct SpaceX alone launched about 27% of those satel
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More recently though, the Falcon 9 and the Atlas V are both very capable launch platforms. While China is catching up to them, most of there launches are on much smaller rockets with a little more than half the lifting capacity.
Sensationalist crap (Score:2)
The US launched fewer orbital rockets this year because they have spent the last few launching most of that they had in the queue. The industry just completed launching a new generation of communications satellites and those are pretty much done now. NASA has its slow cadence of probes but that has never been a large portion of launches except for at the beginning. China on the other hand has a GPS competitor to build out not to mention ongoing milspace build outs as well.
The numbers don't directly represen
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More Launches (Score:2)
At the expense of ... (Score:1)
They are lauded for all these world historical achievements, but it comes at a big price and is holding them back.