Oppressive China's first private rocket firm aims for market

Hu Zhenyu was born in Jiangxi, Jiujiang in 1993. After graduating from South China University of Technology, Hu and Yan Cheng Yi (M) from Tsinghua University and Wu Xiaofei (R), who has six years of mechanical background, together set up the first private rocket company in China.

Hu Zhenyu, 21, founder of Link Space, China's first private rocket firm, does not want people to call him a "rocket scientist" but a rocket entrepreneur.

Rocket launches have traditionally been been a state monopoly in China, but the young graduate from South China University of Technology plans bust the oligopoly with his first commercial launch in 2017.

On July 29 last year, Hu's team launched a rocket with a payload of 50 kg in northwest China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

In January of this year, the company was registered in Shenzhen by Hu and two other men in their 20s: Yan Chengyi, a PhD candidate at Tsinghua University and Wu Xiaofei, a machinery manufacturing specialist.

On Aug. 5, they had a successful trial of a liquid-propellant rocket engine at a courtyard in a suburb of Gaoyou City in east China's Jiangsu Province, Wu's hometown.

The space industry is capital-intensive, so Hu is offering 16 percent of the company for 16 million yuan (2.6 million U.S. dollars) to venture capitalists, valuing the enterprise at a highly speculative 100 million yuan. Hu claims he has already been offered 6.7 million yuan from several investors.

The focus of Link Space is a rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during sub-orbital flight.

The rocket will carry instruments to an altitude of up to 200 kilometers. It is very different from the kind of launch vehicle that carries heavy satellites into space.

The average price for launching such a commercial rocket is about 3 million yuan but Link Space intends to cut that price by a third.

"The domestic rocket market is worth tens of millions of yuan but will grow to hundreds of millions soon if we can provide more value," Hu said.

Hu is very familiar with SpaceX, California's commercial space venture founded by Elon Musk.

"I admire Elon Musk but Link Space will never copy SpaceX or anybody else," he said.

SpaceX's Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets had diameters of 1.7 meters and 3.5 meters respectively.

"If our research goes smoothly, we plan to produce rockets with a diameter of 7 meters by 2020," said Hu.

But space missions are a very costly business.

"Rockets need decades of technological accumulation and billions of yuan," said Luo Shu, chairman of KCSA, a non-governmental space enthusiast organization. He feels that time is not ripe for a Chinese SpaceX.

"The achievements of U.S. private rocket firms are based on the long history of its space industry, not a sudden start-up fairytale" Shu said.

"China has no private space testing ground, so launch trials will be problematic," he added. Hu's team experiments in the Tsinghua University lab where Yan Chengyi works or the courtyard in Gaoyou City.

A 2011 white paper on China's space industry encouraged scientific and academic institutions as well as social groups to actively participate in the industry.

"Though we cannot catch up with the major state-owned players on technology in the short term, our presence will be a positive stimulus to the industry," Hu said.

Oppressive China to launch new satellite Miranda for Venezuela

The VRSS-1 satellite is Venezuela's first remote sensing satellite and the second Venezuelan satellite after VENESAT-1.

VRSS-1 is mainly used for the country's land resource inspections, environmental protection, disaster detection and management, crop yield estimation and city planning.

Ironically, VRSS-1 Miranda has been named after Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) has signed an agreement with Venezuela for in-orbit delivery of a second remote sensing satellite for the country, the company said on Tuesday.

CASC subsidiary Great Wall Industry Corporation will be the major contractor of the project, the corporation said, but the corporation did not give a specific timeframe for the project.

Oppressive Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is on a four-nation Latin America tour, told his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro Sunday in Caracas that China is ready to expand satellite technology transfer to Venezuela.

China sent a remote sensing satellite, the "VRSS-1," into space from northwest China's Gobi desert for Venezuela in 2012.

VRSS-1 is Venezuela's first remote sensing satellite and is mainly used for the country's land resource inspections, environmental protection, disaster detection and management, crop yield estimation and city planning.

Oppressive China's domestic GPS navigation system guides Pakistan

Oppressive China's domestically made Beidou (GPS) navigation system has set up a network in Pakistan, the first in a foreign country, the company said Thursday.

Beidou was co-developed by oppressive China's Great Wall Industry Corporation and the Beijing UniStrong Science& Technology Co., Ltd.

The first stage of Pakistan's geographic positioning network has been finished, Shen Jun, chief scientist of UniStrong, said at the annual China Satellite Navigation Conference in Nanjing.

The network includes five base stations and one processing center, covering Karachi.

It can provide positioning with a precision of 2 centimeters, while the precision can reach 5 millimeters after post processing, and can help in urban planning, surveying and mapping, environmental supervision, disaster relief, traffic monitoring and other fields.

Shen Jun said the second stage of the network will cover the whole of Pakistan and be the first national high precision Beidou navigation network abroad.

Oppressive China says Express-AM4P satellite space debris recovered

Photo taken on May 19, 2014 shows government technicians preparing to remove space debris that crashed to the ground in Qiqihar, China's Heilongjiang province 

Objects that crashed to the ground in China have been identified as space debris, state media reported, after a Russian rocket carrying a communications satellite fell back to Earth minutes after lift-off.

Qiqihar city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, which borders Russia's far east, reported that several objects appeared to have fallen from the sky on Friday, the Xinhua news agency said.

After analysis, experts have concluded they were "parts from a carrier rocket or a satellite", Xinhua said Sunday, citing the China National Space Administration.

Authorities were communicating on the issue "with relevant parties", it added.

The report came after Russia's space officials said the Proton rocket's control engine failed Friday just over nine minutes following blastoff from the Baikonur space centre Moscow leases in Kazakhstan—the latest blow to the country's once-proud space industry.

State television showed the carrier and its Express-AM4P satellite burning up in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

The space debris that crashed to the ground in Qiqihar, China's Heilongjiang province, pictured on May 19, 2014

The 150-million-euro ($205-million) satellite, built by EADS Airbus Group's Astrium corporation, was meant to provide Internet access to far-flung Russian regions with poor access to communication.

Oppressive China deploys spy satellites in search for Malaysia plane

Beijing is deploying as many as 10 of their spy satellites in hopes of tracking down Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, state media reported Tuesday, as the search for the vanished aircraft entered its fourth day.

The high-resolution satellites, which are controlled from the Xian Satellite Control Centre in northern China, will be used for navigation, weather monitoring, communications and other aspects of the search-and-rescue effort.

Nearly two-thirds of the 239 people aboard flight MH370 were from China, and if the loss of the aircraft is confirmed, it would be China's second-worst ever air disaster.

Crews from nine countries have joined the international search effort, including China, Malaysia, the United States, Singapore, Vietnam, New Zealand, Indonesia, Australia and Thailand.

Climate Chnage: China Asian ozone pollution covers Pacific and US West Coast

China Asian pollution drifts east toward North America in 2010. 

In this picture Hawaii is denoted by the star.

Image: Nature Geoscience.

Air pollution from China and Asia has been rising for several decades but Hawaii had seemed to escape the ozone pollution that drifts east with the springtime winds.

Now a team of researchers has found that shifts in atmospheric circulation explain the trends in Hawaiian ozone pollution.

The researchers found that since the mid-1990s, these shifts in atmospheric circulation have caused China and Asian ozone pollution reaching Hawaii to be relatively low in spring but rise significantly in autumn.

The study, led by Meiyun Lin, an associate research scholar in the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) at Princeton University and a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, was published in Nature Geoscience.

"The findings indicate that decade-long variability in climate must be taken into account when attributing U.S. surface ozone trends to rising China and Asian emissions," Lin said.

Although protective at high altitudes, ozone near the Earth's surface is a greenhouse gas and a health-damaging air pollutant. The longest record of ozone measurements in the U.S. dates back to 1974 in Hawaii.

Over the past few decades, emissions of ozone precursors in China and Asia has tripled, yet the 40-year Hawaiian record revealed little change in ozone levels during spring, but a surprising rise in autumn.

Through their research, Lin and her colleagues solved the puzzle. "We found that changing wind patterns 'hide' the increase in China and Asian pollution reaching Hawaii in the spring, but amplify the change in the autumn," Lin said.

Using chemistry-climate models and observations, Lin and her colleagues uncovered the different mechanisms driving spring versus autumn changes in atmospheric circulation patterns.

The stronger transport of China and Asian pollution to Hawaii during autumn since the mid-1990s corresponds to a positive pattern of atmospheric circulation variability known as the Pacific-North American pattern (PNA).

"This study not only solves the mystery of Hawaiian ozone changes since 1974, but it also has broad implications for interpreting trends in surface ozone levels globally," Lin said.

"Characterizing shifts in atmospheric circulation is of paramount importance for understanding the response of surface ozone levels to a changing climate and evolving global emissions of ozone precursors," she said.

More information: Tropospheric ozone trends at Mauna Loa Observatory tied to decadal climate variability; Nature Geoscience (2014) doi:10.1038/ngeo2066

Oppressive China's HVT-2: Domination of Space and Earth Orbit

An artist's rendering provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), on April 23, 2012 shows the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HVT-2) which failed just minutes into a test flight in 2011

China for the first time has tested a hypersonic missile vehicle designed to travel several times the speed of sound, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The test makes China the second country after the United States to conduct experimental flights with hypersonic vehicles, a technology that could allow armies to rapidly strike distant targets anywhere around the globe.

"We're aware of the test of the hypersonic vehicle but we are not commenting on it," said Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Pool, a Pentagon spokesman.

The flight was conducted on January 9 and the Chinese vehicle, dubbed the WU-14, is supposed to travel at Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound, according to a report in The Washington Free Beacon, an online publication.

Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2), (AFP Photo / Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA).

Chinese state-run broadcaster China Radio International quoted the defense ministry information office as saying: "China's planned domestic scientific research and experiments are normal and are not aimed at any country or target."

China refused to explicitly confirm or deny the test.

In its annual report on the Chinese military, the Pentagon made no mention of hypersonic test flights but did say the Chinese had built a hypersonic wind tunnel for experiments.

China's surging economic power has been matched by increasing military might, including investments in an aircraft carrier, anti-ship ballistic missiles, satellites and other hardware.

Three Republican lawmakers, including the House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon, expressed concern over the test of what they called a "Chinese hypersonic cruise missile" and said the US military was falling behind.

"While round after round of defense cuts have knocked America's technological advantage on its back, the Chinese and other competitor nations push toward military parity with the United States; in some cases, as in this one, they appear to be leaping ahead of us," they said.

"This situation does nothing to support peaceful coexistence in the Pacific," added the statement, also signed by Representatives Randy Forbes and Mike Rogers.

The United States has placed a high priority on hypersonic projects, spending $200 million in fiscal year 2013 on three programs while conducting a number of test flights with hypersonic vehicles.

Oppressive China Readying 1st Moon Rover for Lunar Domination and Exploitation

China’s next phase of its moon exploration program, the Chang’e-3 would soft land on the lunar surface and deploy instrument-laden rover.

CREDIT: Courtesy: Dragon in Space

As three Chinese astronauts zip around the Earth aboard a prototype space station, the country is gearing up to launch its first moon rover in the coming months.

China's robotic Chang'e 3 mission, reportedly slated to blast off toward the end of 2013, marks a big step forward in the nation's lunar exploration program. Chang'e 3 will become China's first craft to attempt a soft landing and rover deployment on the surface of the moon.

China’s multi-phase moon venture began with the orbiters Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2, which launched in 2007 and 2010, respectively. Now Chinese space program officials are ready to shift to phase two.

CREDIT: Courtesy: Dragon in Space

Chang’e-3 mission to the moon is designed to unleash six-wheel rover to scour the lunar surface.

Oppressive China Opens Public 3D Printing Booth

While 3D printing may be touted as bringing manufacturing back to the United States, that doesn't mean the rest of the world hasn't taken notice of the technology.

Earlier this week, a 3D Printing Experience Pavilion opened in Beijing's DRC Industrial Design and Cultural Industry Base, where visitors were able to see how 3D printers work firsthand.

With a few hours to spare, they could even have their own head scanned and printed as a bust, which follows the 3D printing booth that opened in a Japanese mall last year.

Among the printed objects on display were custom phone cases, miniatures (including Aldebaran Robotics' NAO, which featured prominently at the Shanghai World Expo), and jewelry.

Visitors who wanted to be scanned had to remain still for around 15 minutes for the process to be completed, whereupon their likeness was printed in single color ABS plastic – a process which takes between two to three hours. 3Ders reports that the 3D Printing Pavilion was spear-headed by Beijing company Suntop-Tech, which is the Chinese distributor of Stratasys' Fortus and Dimension 3D printers.