Shenlong Space Plane Advances China’s Military Space Potential

International Assessment and Strategy Center ^ | 12/17.2007 | Richard Fisher, Jr.

[Dumpster Baby]

Russia's Buran space shuttle is also a museum piece now, too.

[1rudeboy]

If you spend most of your time around major metropolitan areas, T-Mobile has an excellent program named To-Go. You buy a phone in a box (figure maybe $60), and have the dealer activate it for x number of minutes with T-Mobile. You "refill" the phone with minutes as needed, with cards denominated in $10, $20, and $50 sold at assorted retailers.

Calls anywhere in the U.S. are billed at 9 cents a minute. The minutes can expire, but I don't remember after how long. The most important feature: no contract. Use the phone as you see fit. If you live outside a major metropolitian area, then you need to be more concerned about which carrier gives the best coverage.

[1rudeboy]

OMGLOL--I began to wonder about your "40 below" comment, and I started thinking to myself, "is he the guy from Alaska?" So I checked your home page.

I'm afraid you will have to worry about coverage. Ask your friends about their cellular providers. I live in Chicago, and I asked around for months before I settled on T-Mobile (interesting factoid: they don't work 30 floors or more up in the air). Problem is, you can receive assurances from the retailers and check websites all you wish and they'll all say their phones will work. But ask an electrical contractor on a jobsite somewhere (or someone else who actually uses and needs their phone) and they'll tell you something entirely different.

[Brad from Tennessee]

After the U.S. raid on Libya in 1986 Seymour Hersh claimed that the Pentagon had contemplated using a top secret stealth bomber in the raid but decided against it. At the time I read it I chalked it up as a typical Hersh fairy tale. I figured they had some test prototypes but I had no idea the thing had been flying for five years. Two years later the Air Force admitted they had it.

I figure the U.S. military space plane is about as black as they can make it in this information age.

[Calvin Locke]

Glen and another name-forgotten senator blocked committee chairman Freddy Thompson from investigating the Chinese government's donations for Clinton and the DNC.

Glen, and McCain for that matter, should have been booted out of the Senate and into a Federal pen for their parts in the 1980ish Keating Five scandal.

[null and void]

I figure the U.S. military space plane is about as black as they can make it in this information age.

Yeah, my dad worked as a source inspector for DCAS. I know of one black project he ever worked on, and that is only because it isn't black anymore.

I am certain he has worked on others, I will never know unless they go public before he's gone.

I won't ask, and he would never tell even if I did.

[jmcenanly]

The Russians copied and built an existing ship, probably with some help from Monogram. The Chinese appear to have just taken public domain concepts for the Space Shuttle, as well as a mid-80's proposed follow-up, and published them in Chinese. One model in particular, in the lowest photo, looks like a cross between the current shuttle and the M2-F2 lifting body. This is the one that crashed on May 10 1967, and was thereafter seen weekly as the opening for The Six Million Dollar Man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdVlMwlz6hc

[null and void]

M2-F2 lifting body:

Chinese copy?:

Apart from the winglets on the wing tips, they don't look all that similar to me.

Ours is a blended body, theirs has a tubular fuselage.

[null and void]

OTOH the X-20 Dyna-Soar...

[Paul Ross]

The Shuttle is about to be permanently decommissioned. And then there will be a five-to-six year hiatus before the U.S. has a manned alternative...which will be far, far less capable.

[Paul Ross]

Flew once, unmanned. Which was a good thing as a live crew would have been roasted alive on re-entery

First I have ever heard that claimed.

[Paul Ross]

If we figure it out, they’ll steal it. If they figure it out, we’ll only know when it is far, far too late.

That is the way it has been going so far.

[Toddsterpatriot]

But 75% of their products are made in China.

Their cost of goods sold in the year ending January 2007 was $264 billion. You think $198 billion was Chinese goods?

[null and void]

I heard it from a couple of sources at the time.

[Phalse]

Hey everyone,

I heard there was a US response to the Shenlong. They are calling it some kind of Battleship thing.

Check out the artile here

http://alternity.us/battlellite

It seems that article has links to a few other articles and this thread.

ttyl

[anymouse]

Apparently you missed this thread.

[KevinDavis]

Time for a Space Force..

[Army Air Corps]

In those photos, the craft looks a helluva lot like the ESA Hermes craft.

[SunkenCiv]

lifting body:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-010-DFRC.html
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-011-DFRC.html