NASA mulling keeping shuttles in service until 2017

NASA is studying plans to keep the space shuttle Endeavour in flight-worthy condition after its last scheduled mission. The ‘what if’ NASA study comes as United Space Alliance proposes a plan to continue flying Endeavour and Atlantis as commercial space vehicles.


The story, reported by msnbc, says the review includes the potential for keeping Endeavour – the youngest shuttle in the fleet – in operation through 2017. The shuttle, along with its sisterships, is currently due for retirement later this year and eventual transfer to a museum.


Another lifeline study for Endeavour? (Guy Norris)

The proposal — called Commercial Space Transportation Service, or CSTS — would use Endeavour as well as a sister shuttle, Atlantis, to fly two missions a year from 2013 to 2017 at an annual cost of $1.5 billion. United Space Alliance, the contractor that currently manages the shuttle program on NASA’s behalf, has offered the proposal for the second round of funding from the space agency’s Commercial Crew Development initiative, also known as CCDev 2.

NASA could award as much as $200 million in the second round of the CCDev initiative. During the first round, the agency distributed $50 million in stimulus funds to five companies to advance the development of crew-capable replacements for the shuttles.
Some of the recipients of first-round funding — such as the Boeing Co. and Sierra Nevada Corp. — have made proposals for second-round funding as well. The second-round competitors also include SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, which are already receiving NASA funds to build spacecraft for transporting cargo to the space station.
United Space Alliance is the only venture proposing to keep the shuttles operating rather than retiring them this year, as currently planned.

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”.

China slips Top Gun clip into combat propaganda

China Central Television (CCTV) reported in its Network News Broadcast that the Chinese Air Force has acquired combat capabilities for distant waters. A video clip of a J-10 Fighter in a live combat exercise was shown. Sharp-eyed netizens quickly noticed a less than two second long clip of an aircraft exploding in midair that was taken from the 1986 U.S. movie hit Top Gun. A frame-by-frame comparison of the CCTV news video and the footage from Top Gun has widely spread on the Internet.

CCTV’s Network News Broadcast is a 30-minute news program that has been aired every night at 7 p.m. since 1976.

A Jan. 27 report by Yunnan Information News said the video in question was aired on Jan. 23. An Internet user by the name of “Liu Yi” pointed out that the exploded target was a U.S. F-5 jet fighter, and that the video was from the movie Top Gun, where Tom Cruise piloted an F-14 shooting at the F-5.

This discovery was first posted on Jan. 26 at 14:48 on a Sina microblog by someone calling himself “X-rated”. A frame-by-frame comparison of the two videos shows that the two footages are identical, including such details as the moving direction of fragments from the explosion and the shape of the smoke.

The video clip was aired by CCTV with the following narration: “The J-10 Fighter is a new acquisition to this division and made by our country … [it] won the first battle against a brother division by 13 to 1. All 18 targets were hit in its first live target combat practice.”

“X-rated” sectioned the CCTV video into 3 frames and compared them side by side to footage from Top Gun, saying, “How come they look the same to me?”

“Liu Yi” responded, “Just saw the frames. The target is confirmed to be an F-5.”

He then posted in his microblog another picture from the CCTV video showing clearly an F-5. The same footage in Top Gun was found at 96' to 98' where a few scenes show an F-14 fighter destroying an F-5.

Other people noticed that the color of the clip in question is lighter than the rest of the video. The conversion from NTSC used in the U.S. to PAL used in China might be the reason.

Some netizens suggested that Top Gun should ask CCTV for copyright damages.

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New photos of RQ-170 UAV "Beast" surface.

Originally posted HERE!


Click to enlarge:





LINK HERE

China denies it copied U.S. stealth ...

Chinese military experts say that China didn't steal U.S. technology to build the J-20, country's first stealth plane.

"China is completely capable of making its own stealth fighter jet," Li Daguang, a professor at the country's National Defense University, told the Wall Street Journal. "I think we developed the J-20 largely on our own research, but at the same time learning from existing foreign models. Many countries have already possessed stealth-jet technology… stealth materials are not considered highly sophisticated or confidential at all."


Previous reports on China's plane said that the country used technology gleaned from a U.S. F-117 Nighthawk fighter plane that was gunned down over Serbia in 1999.
The fallen F-117 left huge debris scattered throughout farmland in Serbia. Some people collected these parts as souvenirs and later sold them to Chinese agents who were in the region at the time.

"We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies… and to reverse-engineer them," Adm. Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia's military chief of staff during the Kosovo war, told the AP.


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