Thread: China space mission article hits Web before launch

Several years ago I found evidence that the Chinese space program was using photo manipulation software to put spacecraft in photos where they did not really exist. I found other coincidences, too, but these two articles should get you thinking:


China space mission article hits Web before launch

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_ ... _article_1

Thu Sep 25, 9:20 AM ET

A news story describing a successful launch of China's long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground.

The country's official news agency Xinhua posted the article on its Web site Thursday, and remained there for much of the day before it was taken down.

A staffer from the Xinhuanet.com Web site who answered the phone Thursday said the posting of the article was a "technical error" by a technician. The staffer refused to give his name as is common among Chinese officials.

The Shenzhou 7 mission, which will feature China's first-ever spacewalk, is set to launch Thursday from Jiuquan in northwestern China between 9:07 a.m. EDT and 10:27 p.m. EDT.

The arcticle, dated two days from now on Sept. 27, vividly described the rocket in flight, complete with a sharply detailed dialogue between the three astronauts.

Excerpts are below:

"After this order, signal lights all were switched on, various data show up on rows of screens, hundreds of technicians staring at the screens, without missing any slightest changes ...

'One minute to go!'

'Changjiang No.1 found the target!'...

"The firm voice of the controller broke the silence of the whole ship. Now, the target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time ...

'The air pressure in the cabin is normal!'

"Ten minutes later, the ship disappears below the horizon. Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean."

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Manned Launcher Or Clever Fake?

"The space community was baffled and divided last week over pictures of what appear to be China's new manned launch vehicle being rolled out to a pad from a large new processing building. The problem: are the photos real or sophisticated fakes?

Posted on a Chinese-language U.S. Web site by an anonymous source in China, the photos show a Soyuz-like spacecraft sitting atop a Long March with a new designation, "2F." While Long March boosters have traditionally been stacked on the pad with cranes, the pictures show the 2F emerging fully assembled from a new building (below) similar to but smaller than the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center. The booster and spacecraft are being transported vertically - like the space shuttle - to a nearby launch pad (right). A crew escape tower also is visible.

China has been working for several years on its manned space program, dubbed Project 921. A Chinese space official said recently the first launch of a two-person spacecraft wont occur before 2000.

Analysts of Beijing's space program said the pictures fit predictions that China's first manned spacecraft would be heavily based on a Russian Soyuz, if not a modified version of an actual Soyuz. Phillip S. Clark, a space specialist in Great Britain, said the vehicle "looks like a Russian Soyuz with some modifications." He said the new pad should be located at the Jiuquan launch site near the Gobi desert.

But are the pictures real? Not likely, said one congressional intelligence source. The source said if the VAB-like building exists it would have been detected by U.S. intelligence and used as evidence in the House Cox Committee report on China's efforts to acquire U.S. technology.

The photos were posted on a Web site hosted by Jun Zhang, a staff research associate at the Fusion Energy Research Lab at the University of California, San Diego. He told Aviation Week the pictures were sent by someone in China using the alias "North Polar Bear," who said they were taken in May 1998 by the Inner Mongolia Construction Co.

Col. Pedro Rustan (USAF, Ret.), a former National Reconnaissance Office official who has written a dissertation on the VAB at Kennedy, questioned whether the Chinese would locate an assembly building so close to the pad, where it could be damaged or destroyed in a launch mishap. "That perspective is like two blocks," he said. "I cannot believe anybody who had any common sense could put a launch pad next to a [VAB] building." But, he added, "Whoever did this [picture] knows physics. It's done very well." That's because the pictures are real, contends Charles Vick of the Federation of American Scientists. "The kind of details I see are not the kind of stuff people are going to take out of the dear blue sky," he said. "There are too many details to fake." At China's Washington embassy, Asst. Military Attachй Col. Ren Fumao said he's been to the launch site many times. "I never saw this building. I think it's just a computer-drawn picture."

(source: AW&ST, June 14, 1999, p. 85)

China lying about a space launch? That would be akin to China cheating in the Olympics. Oh yeh they did that to, what was I thinking?