Shenzhou 7?

[VincentMcConnell]

That is not irrational. What is irrational is believing that all of the scientists and other experts around the world are either too stupid to realize China is faking their space program, or are willing participants in the hoax. What is irrational is your belief that only you, a 17 year old kid, could discover the truth. What is irrational is your inability to even consider the possibility that you are wrong.

No, I think many people have figured it out, yet they don't want to risk their careers even if they have great proof.
For the pen, I used wires and slowmo.

[SolusLupus]

We know human space travel is possible.  We know China is becoming a real economic power.  They have the resources and man-power to get into space.  There's footage.  There's photos.  There's telemetry.  There's satellites.

I'm sorry, this just isn't a plausible hoax.

[advancedboy]

`they don't want to risk their careers even if they have great proof`
For once I agree with you Vincent. There is nothing more dangerous  to Status Quo than a man that has nothing to lose. And it  is not strictly China bound.

[SolusLupus]

Or several hundred thousands of men, amateur radio operators, and engineers and scientists that actually know their stuff, that never once let anything slip, even though no other conspiracy in the world has been handled so expertly.

Nothing ever slipped.  No mistakes.  Nothing told to outsiders.  Nothing appearing on wikileaks.  Nothing popping up on blogs.  Nothing at all.

Except for alleged mistakes that any teenager somehow is able to spot from their computer, that they can identify better than any engineer on the known planet.

That about sum it up?

[Andromeda]

Some people were bothered by this. I don`t know if they had additional lighting but it seems to be lighting in backgound. This is a still from a video.

That would be the small lighting system next to the camera attached to the hull.

[Jason Thompson]

Wow, see what a couple of minutes of actual research can turn up? There was a lighting rig reflected on something? Yup, because the Chinese put it on their spacecraft!

[Jason Thompson]

For the pen, I used wires and slowmo.

And I guarantee you that will be strongly in evidence on the video, however convincing it may look to you.

[Andromeda]

Wow, see what a couple of minutes of actual research can turn up? There was a lighting rig reflected on something? Yup, because the Chinese put it on their spacecraft!

It did, literally, take me a couple of minutes...

[SolusLupus]

Meh, that's obviously fake.  They rigged the whole thing up after they noticed they had to disprove what the internet found out, but naturally didn't bother making it space worthy in the slightest.  Much more efficient that way, don'tcha know.  Faking everything was much easier. 

[Jason Thompson]

It's not that they behave opposite my expectations, it's that they behave in ways that defy the laws of physics in space.

And exactly what are your qualifications to judge that, Vincent? No offence to your age, but you are talking to people here who have studied physics for many years longer than you have, and several of them now apply it in their jobs. It is the case that they behave against your expectations. That is because your understanding of the laws of physics and your interpretation of the video is flawed.

How do you know, for example, that the tethers do not move upwards naturally because that is the shape they want to adopt because of the materials they are made of? Deprived of external forces like gravity, flexible objects will adopt their lowest energy shape, i.e. one with the least tension and compression in them. You seem to be expecting them to simply adopt whatever shape they are put in and stay there.

[Jason Thompson]

Here is a video of Ed White's Gemini 4 spacewalk.

Notice how at 0.47 there is a strap and a loop visible, both of which are 'floating' upwards of their own volition. Notice how as he sets up the camera at about 1.16 the coiled tether is floating upwards rather than sitting against the spacecraft.

Violating the laws of physics? Filmed underwater? Or just the natural tendency of the things in question?

[ka9q]

Vincent, when I saw you start this thread I honestly thought you were joking. I really thought you were doing a spoof of the usual Apollo hoax believer argument with "United States" replaced by "China". But it appears you're serious. Can you please confirm that? Sarcasm doesn't always come through in text.

For the record, I really don't care what anyone who professes to support me in other contexts thinks about the Chinese space program. I see absolutely no reason to suspect that it isn't perfectly real, and it would take a lot to overcome that.

[carpediem]

No, I think many people have figured it out, yet they don't want to risk their careers even if they have great proof.

Did Dr. Qu Zheng's career end?
Has he suffered in any way for his statements?

[cjameshuff]

How do you know, for example, that the tethers do not move upwards naturally because that is the shape they want to adopt because of the materials they are made of? Deprived of external forces like gravity, flexible objects will adopt their lowest energy shape, i.e. one with the least tension and compression in them. You seem to be expecting them to simply adopt whatever shape they are put in and stay there.

I just redid the wiring behind my computers while installing a KVM switch...stiff cables sprawling every which way, even under a full 1 g. They've got a bulky, heavily protected umbilical carrying air, power, and electrical signals...and it's something they *want* to be a bit stiff, so it can be more easily manipulated in freefall without flopping around and snagging on everything.

As pointed out earlier, achieving neutral buoyancy is not difficult, some unobtrusive weights would have done the job perfectly well, and just positioning the camera above or below the set would cause buoyancy errors to be far less obvious. Blue tinted water could trivially be compensated for by using lights with low color temperature, or in post processing.

So, we have a country that has demonstrated all the capabilities required unnecessarily and riskily deciding to fake the EVA, and failing to compensate for some obvious giveaways while doing so, or we have an EVA with a stiff tether doing what tethers have been observed to do in other EVAs, and a camera with poor color balance, as is fairly typical, color balance not being a great priority in their application. The color balance is even off in the expected manner of a camera attempting to automatically compensate for a color cast in the scene, lit partially by the big, bright blue Earth in the background.

Summary: zero evidence of a hoax. And the video does in fact provide evidence of a freefall, airless environment not reproducible on Earth. Radars around the world track the launches, amateurs observe them and photograph them with their scopes, and we ourselves did similar operations decades ago with far more primitive technology. So why would anyone believe it was hoaxed?

[Grashtel]

I wonder if given the quality and detail of the pictures that amateurs have been to produce of the ISS if it would have been possible to get pictures of Shenzhou with sufficient detail to show the EVA in progress?  While I am not aware of anyone even attempting to do so the possibility of it would make attempting a hoax even less appealing and more likely to be revealed.