Photo taken on June 3, 2013 shows the assembly of the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft and the Long March-2F carrier rocket at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwest China's Gansu Province. The assembly was transported to the launch site on Monday morning, which marks the manned Shenzhou-10 mission entering the final phase of its preparation. The spacecraft, which will be launched in mid-June from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, will carry three astronauts and dock with Tiangong-1, target orbiter and space module. Source:China.org.cn
Bloomberg: This Remote Military Base Is Where China Blasts Humans Into Space
Jiayuguan was once the tangible edge of Chinese civilization –- where the Great Wall ends and the desolation of the Gobi Desert begins.
Now, four hours beyond those limits in a locked-down location along the Ruoshui River, China has built a gateway to the new final frontier.
Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is the nation’s preeminent “space city”—one of only three places where humans are blasted into the cosmos. Six manned flights have departed from here, including last month’s Shenzhou 11 mission to China’s own orbiting lab. Manned trips to the moon and Mars in the next decades also are being discussed.
The center also is the launching place for China’s most-important machines. The world’s first quantum-communications satellite, designed to provide hack-proof transmissions for the military, left here in August. The government and military, which ultimately controls the space program, don’t announce every launch, but the nonprofit Space Foundation estimates that at least 82 attempts have been made from the site since 1970.
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Update: China's Secretive Space Program Threatens NASA's Dominance (Bloomberg)
WNU Editor: The Chinese have gone a long way in the past two decades .... and they are clearly on the trajectory to be the dominant power in space in the next two decades.
Well, they still have a long way to go for reaching the NASA level.
ReplyDeleteThe handicap period is about to end.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.space.com/8725-nasa-chief-bolden-muslim-remark-al-jazeera-stir.html
"The White House and NASA on Tuesday defended comments that the nation's top space official made on the Arabic news network Al-Jazeera about one of his "foremost" tasks being to reach out to the Muslim world.
NASA chief Charles Bolden's remarks caused a stir among commentators.
"When I became the NASA administrator, (President Obama) charged me with three things," Bolden said in the interview which aired last week. "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.""
That is just pitiful self hatred on so many levels but what you expect from a mans admin that ran on the basis he was going to come as a world leader not a american leader.
The biggest threat to NASA is the large debt the US is carrying. The End Game will not be pretty.
ReplyDeleteChina cannot threaten NASA.
ReplyDeleteObama pretty much done it in.