Out of Pod Experience

Before or after we run all our coal mines out of business? Just stock up on candles is all I can say.

Well.... China means something like 'our-land'. So I guess Chikōng 'our-sky' and Chikōngese.

A few historical facts:
* The first man made satellite, Sputnik, was launched using Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). That is what scared the US, not the satellite itself, but the vehicle that delivered it.
* Only two countries designed, made, used a shuttle. US and USSR.

Ask yourself these questions: Why European Space Agency does not have a shuttle? Why Japan does not use shuttle? Why India does not use shuttle? Why China does not use shuttle? If shuttle is so great, why all these countries that regularly send missions to space do not use shuttles?

The short answer is that there are two ways to make a space shuttle program; as it should be done, and spending one tenth of the money and get what the US got.

The concept is good, but it requires massive investment in the design and production stage. The actual shuttles were too cheap, too small, too underpowered, too unfit and relied on too many shortcuts and patches to work. FAI, Instead of putting the ship on top of a Saturn V, they created a whole new propulsion system that attached the starcraft to a massive hydogen tank surrounded by two massive flaming rockets. We all know how well that worked, compared to, say, put the craft on top of a rocket and kick the emergency thrusters if **** happened under the astronauts' arses. Moreso: the original shuttle design implied a titanium heat shield that would have costed half as the whole final final aircraft itself, but could had been used for 100 flights without fear of it being hit by a piece of supersonic foam.

I hope they build something working some day.

NASA should go back to the moon and bury Neil Armstrong there.