Author Topic: Shenzhou 7?  (Read 162666 times)

Offline ka9q

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #345 on: July 08, 2012, 12:15:12 AM »
What about it is so difficult to understand, honestly?  They have universities in China, where you can learn mathematics, engineering, rocketry, any number of things.
Not only that, but many of their students come here (to the USA) to attend American universities and get the very same education as many American students. (University education seems to be one of our country's few remaining major exports).

A quick look around my workplace reveals an awful lot of non-US nationals (their badges are distinctive). It's not that non-Americans are easier or cheaper to hire -- the government makes just the opposite true -- but that there simply aren't enough American engineers to meet the demand. So we have to go overseas. This worries me.



Offline gwiz

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #346 on: July 08, 2012, 05:26:01 AM »
In the early 1980s I had the honor of meeting the late Geoffrey Perry, teacher at the Kettering Grammar School (aka "junior/senior high school" to us Yanks) in the UK, who became world famous for the detective work he did in the 1960s and 70s with his students on the secretive Soviet space program. Geoff and his very young students, armed with little more than a cheap shortwave receiver and a lot of curiosity and cleverness, managed to figure out the existence of the then secret Plesetsk Cosmodrome. We don't know if the intelligence agencies already knew this, but the public certainly didn't.
I remember an obituary for him saying something along the lines of:
He lived long enough into the days of glastnov to finally "read the answers at the back of the book" and confirm that so many of his deductions were correct.
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Offline Donnie B.

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #347 on: July 08, 2012, 07:21:49 AM »
In the early 1980s I had the honor of meeting the late Geoffrey Perry, teacher at the Kettering Grammar School (aka "junior/senior high school" to us Yanks) in the UK, who became world famous for the detective work he did in the 1960s and 70s with his students on the secretive Soviet space program. Geoff and his very young students, armed with little more than a cheap shortwave receiver and a lot of curiosity and cleverness, managed to figure out the existence of the then secret Plesetsk Cosmodrome. We don't know if the intelligence agencies already knew this, but the public certainly didn't.
I remember an obituary for him saying something along the lines of:
He lived long enough into the days of glastnov to finally "read the answers at the back of the book" and confirm that so many of his deductions were correct.
Sorry to be pedantic, but I believe the word you're after is Glasnost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost

It must have been fun to meet Mr. Perry.  He was a worthy successor to the Sherlockian tradition.

Offline ka9q

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #348 on: July 08, 2012, 10:49:32 AM »
It must have been fun to meet Mr. Perry.  He was a worthy successor to the Sherlockian tradition.
Absolutely. But to him, being a detective was just his way of being a teacher. Teaching was his obvious passion.

Offline cjameshuff

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #349 on: July 08, 2012, 07:01:14 PM »
But many qualified people can be blind to evidence because they simply don't want something to not be real. I have still received NO proof to the claim that China has the ability to let a man spacewalk outside his cabin. Many people have said that here on this thread but have offered no proof of their claims. I guess we can just assume there is no proof that China can safely spacewalk...

None? They've provided a nice video of the spacewalk being performed, something that would be quite difficult to fake. I think someone linked it earlier...

Offline Inanimate Carbon Rod

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #350 on: July 10, 2012, 07:26:53 AM »
Would the VincentMcConnel of this thread be the same Vincent who produced the woo YouTube videos on how to fake lunar footprints and various other proof of hoaxing in the Apollo program?
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Offline ChrLz

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #351 on: July 10, 2012, 08:50:05 AM »
Would the VincentMcConnel of this thread be the same Vincent who produced the woo YouTube videos on how to fake lunar footprints and various other proof of hoaxing in the Apollo program?
He most assuredly is.  In fact he came here pushing his hoax belief most vehemently, but then claimed to have changed his mind and became an even more vehement supporter of all things Apollo.  Yet as you have noted, he left much of his 'legacy' behind, so his turnaround seems rather shallow.

And now he repeats his earlier mistakes, it seems, with Shenzhou 7...  For some folks, just being noticed is all that is important, it seems.  Even making allowances for youth, it's not a good look.

Offline Andromeda

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #352 on: July 10, 2012, 08:53:50 AM »
Would the VincentMcConnel of this thread be the same Vincent who produced the woo YouTube videos on how to fake lunar footprints and various other proof of hoaxing in the Apollo program?

I think so, especially if you look at his early posts on the Proboards site where he talked about the YouTube videos he made.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2012, 08:57:27 AM by Andromeda »
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Offline Inanimate Carbon Rod

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #353 on: July 10, 2012, 02:46:05 PM »
He most assuredly is.  In fact he came here pushing his hoax belief most vehemently, but then claimed to have changed his mind and became an even more vehement supporter of all things Apollo.  Yet as you have noted, he left much of his 'legacy' behind, so his turnaround seems rather shallow.

Poor, dumb kid! The internet never forgets! His truly herculean monuments of stupidity are out there for all to see. This may affect his future career, especially if it's science or engineering.
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Offline ka9q

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #354 on: July 10, 2012, 11:33:34 PM »
Poor, dumb kid! The internet never forgets! His truly herculean monuments of stupidity are out there for all to see. This may affect his future career, especially if it's science or engineering.
I've had this discussion with my colleagues a few times -- about how now we have an Internet that never forgets, that everything you've ever said or done (under your name, at least) can be found in a few seconds with a Google search by a future employer, prospective spouse (or father-in-law), lender, and of course the media and the public should you ever run for office. And how the current generation of young people will grow up with this when we didn't.

But there's a possible mitigating factor. Some information that would have been extremely damaging tends to become less so with time. A perfect example is the knowledge that someone is gay. At one time, having this generally known would have wrecked somone's life; it'd get them fired, socially shunned and possibly prosecuted -- as it did with Alan Turing. Today, not so much though it still happens in some backwaters. It may turn out that so many young people will have so many skeletons in their Google closets when they get older that everyone will just start to dismiss them, much as we now dismiss the reports of occasional youthful pot smoking or even cocaine use by mainstream presidential candidates. If we disqualified everyone who ever tried an illegal drug in their youth, there wouldn't be anyone left.


Offline Peter B

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #355 on: July 11, 2012, 09:07:12 AM »
I don’t get it.

I watched the footage and saw nothing suspicious.

Things I did see were a flag fluttering in all directions, karabiners bouncing back and forth on the rails they were clipped onto and a mirror on the astronaut’s left wrist.

A flag in water will only move in the direction it’s dragged. There’s simply no way the flag will remain perpendicular to its direction of motion if it’s in water. I suspect that would be the case even if the rectangle was made of something heavy like lead or uranium, but such a flag then wouldn’t be flexible.

The karabiners are either going to be lighter than water or heavier than water. If they’re lighter than water they’re going to float in one direction, and if heavier they’re going they’re going to sink in another direction. But no matter their density compared to water, I can’t see them bouncing around like they do in the video clip.

The mirror is presumably to let the astronauts read dials on their chest, but it has the incidental effect of reflecting everything as they move their arms around. If the footage was all recorded in a tank, that’s a lot of extra computer work to ensure the reflections are correct and consistent, and that no extraneous objects are reflected.

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Russia has done a lot of stuff, too and they were communists. They also lied about a lot of things because communist governments aren't open and therefore can lie and get away with it.
Yes they lied a lot. And a lot of people in the Western media bought the lies. But the point is that the Soviets didn’t get away with a lot of stuff. The Americans knew about the N-1 rockets as they were rolled out onto the pad, so even if the Soviets claimed they weren’t part of this American Space Race silliness, NASA knew otherwise. Likewise the disappearing astronauts were noticed in the 1970s thanks to different versions of doctored photos. Ten minutes of faked video is orders of magnitude more complex than individual photos.

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… just because a technology works, doesn't mean the operator understands how to use it. Just because China USES Russian technology doesn't mean they have learned how to properly put it to work. This goes for any country that attempts spaceflight. Not just China.
Seeing as you accept the reality of earlier Chinese space flights, are you seriously saying that they’d be launching people into space without knowing how their spacecraft work?

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I have still received NO proof to the claim that China has the ability to let a man spacewalk outside his cabin. Many people have said that here on this thread but have offered no proof of their claims. I guess we can just assume there is no proof that China can safely spacewalk...
What sort of proof would satisfy you?

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China has not had space-age technology for almost 60 years like the US and Russia has. Someone who is new to something might "suck" at it. If China can't do something yet, but they want to be apart of the game, they can just as easily fake it. Were you alive in the 60's? If you were, you remember space missions (advanced ones, too!) going up every few months. Apollo missions going up just three months apart or whatever. From testing the LM in LEO in March to landing it on the moon in July. China has so far (apparently) achieved three manned space missions over the last almost ten years.... If they were moving at the rate we were in the 60's, they'd already have landed a man on the moon. But they're not.
Unfortunately I see a few problems with this argument.

The first is that if the Chinese were launching a mission every three months or so, that would also be fodder for the conspiracy theorists, who would be asking, “How can they possibly be achieving so many missions so quickly? It must be faked!”

The second thing is that the rate of Chinese launches is obviously affected by a heap of factors, including budget. I have no idea what the Chinese Manned Space Missions budget is, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s smaller (when adjusted for inflation) than NASA’s equivalent was back in the early- to mid-1960s.

Thirdly, the amount of time China has had their technology is broadly the same as the time the Soviets and Americans had their technology prior to their successful spacewalk missions. If the Soviets and Americans could achieve spacewalks that quickly, why can’t the Chinese?
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Offline twik

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #356 on: July 11, 2012, 10:08:59 AM »
Vincent, could you explain what "proof" you would accept that the Chinese can, indeed, manage a space walk? Because to most of us, the video is basic proof. It's then up to you to disprove the video. It's a little like a defense attorney in a murder trial, presented with his client's fingerprints on the murder weapon, demanding "Prove to me that no one faked them! I bet it could be done somehow!" Really, it's up to the attorney to bring up proof that the evidence was faked.

And arguing "the video of the spacewalk must be faked, because there's no proof they can do a spacewalk," is glaringly obvious as circular reasoning. I'm sure you're better than that.

Offline Inanimate Carbon Rod

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #357 on: July 11, 2012, 11:20:44 AM »
What sort of proof would satisfy you?

I don't think any proof would satisfy Vincent, he's had a lot in this thread which he's refused to accept. He's either an idiot or zealot, possibly both.
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Offline twik

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #358 on: July 11, 2012, 11:38:20 AM »
So, in other words, you don't doubt that the technology is capable of sending people into orbit, you doubt that the Chinese people are capable of understanding the technology.

No. I don't say only China can't understand it, but they do have a hunger to be a world power. If they don't understand spaceflight, (Like many countries don't), then they will have to fake it in order to establish their position in the world of space.
It has nothing to do with specifically hating Chinese. It has to do with hypothesizing a mission was faked. That mission just happens to have been a Chinese one.

Vincent, LunarOrbit never accused you of saying only the Chinese can't "understand" spaceflight. You are suggesting that the Chinese do not, alone or in companionship with, say, Papua New Guinea. Apparently, to you, spaceflight is so complicated that only a handful of countries (coincidentally, I'm sure, ones with high European populations) can manage to achieve a space walk. Even if they have the work of previous pioneers to build on. Could you explain what barriers exist to China "understanding" space flight? Time constraints? Money? Manpower? Inherent intelligence?

Now, regarding the bit I've bolded. You came here originally saying that the US program was faked. Then, having accepted the US as a space-faring nation, you have found what you believe is evidence the Chinese program is a fake. I think you're admitting without realizing it that you, for some reason, want to believe that spacefaring is a hoax. If you can't get the goods on one country, you'll just switch to the next.

Offline Mr Gorsky

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Re: Shenzhou 7?
« Reply #359 on: July 12, 2012, 05:59:01 AM »
Unless I am missing something, I really don't see what is so hard about a spacewalk once you have the technology to put a human being into space. Surely all that is required is a capsule that can be safely opened in space, with an exit hatch that is large enough to accommodate an astronaut in full spacesuit, and either some way of tethering the astronaut safely to the craft or some way of enabling the astronaut to return safely to the craft without tethering them.

I realise I am no rocket scientist, but it strikes me that a spacewalk is only a small step on from putting the astronaut out in space in the first place.
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