Monkey see - monkey do - China & Russia building space plane too!

Russians and China said to be working on their own X37 type craft.
30 January 2011
By gary

Shenlong
A report published by China Aviation Journal, China has successfully launched its own space plane prototype, the news came out shortly after the US Air Force announced the successful test of their advanced X37B space plane, which is widely regarded as a next-generation super weapon that is even more dangerous than atomic bomb. This story has now been deleted.

Last year the X37 B was lost and found not once but twice by a South African amateur astronomer.

The Ming Pao and the Zhongguo Pinglun (China Review), a news website in Hong Kong, posted an article headlined “China succeeds in spacecraft test flight in tandem with U.S. X-37B” until early Tuesday, but no mainland Chinese media websites mentioned anything about it.

China’s “Hermes” Space Plane: A December 16 photo shows a model of the Shenlong and a new model of the Chinese “Hermes” space plane. China has made significant progress toward the development of an unmanned trans-atmospheric vehicle and a Space Plane. Beijing’s technological advancement has obvious commercial and scientific uses, however the military significance of the plane cannot be denied.

Hong Kong’s Ming Pao daily on Tuesday said Shaanxi TV last Saturday quoted acting provincial governor Zhao Zhengyong as saying China has “succeeded in the test flight of a prototype aircraft that can fly through the atmospheric layer.” Zhao was visiting a state-run aircraft corporation at Xi’an high-tech industrial development zone.

Chinese officials say that their rocket powered space plane program may be a reaction to U.S. ambitions to dominate space and develop space planes, hypersonic transports and bombers.

The involvement of fighter aircraft design institutes, plus previous statements of Chinese spacecraft design officials and related military-engineering literature, suggest that China wants its space planes to perform military, even attack, missions. The Chinese Daily said Beijing’s development of the aircraft was leaked to the press like recent stories about its new stealth fighter dubbed the J-20, but authorities were “deleting all Internet posts about the space fighter.”

The Chinese channel showed images of a prototype space fighter being assembled whose outward appearance was almost identical to a U.S. pilotless upper-atmosphere military spaceship, the X-37B, the daily said. The U.S.’ pilotless upper-atmosphere military spaceship, the X-37B /Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

Chinese military analysts clarify that a Space plane will definitely form the basis for a space combat platform. This space combat platform will be intended to attack targets on Earth or it could carry out counter-space combat missions. China is aggressively pursuing air-breathing hypersonic propulsion technologies, which will provide additional avenues to develop very rapid long-range “deep strike” weapons.

There are news stories about “People’s Liberation Army Air craft carrier space program in 2000″ which claim that China is also building a Spacecraft Carrier.

Russian researchers seem to be playing catch up, they are developing an unmanned spaceflight vehicle, something similar to the Boeing X-37 Orbital Test Vehicle, but its final use remains still unknown.

Oleg Ostapenko, Space Troops chief , revealed it also declaring that: “Something has been done along these lines, but as to whether we will use it, only time will tell”.