China’s Long March 2C rocket launches three military satellites
China today used its Long March 2C rocket to launch three military reconnaissance satellites into orbit.
The rocket’s first stage uses highly toxic hypergolic fuels, and is expendable. Since it is launched from the interior of China, that stage always crashes on land, sometimes near residential areas. No word on where it crashed today.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
19 SpaceX
18 China
8 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
The U.S. still leads China 27 to 18 in the national rankings.
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China today used its Long March 2C rocket to launch three military reconnaissance satellites into orbit.
The rocket’s first stage uses highly toxic hypergolic fuels, and is expendable. Since it is launched from the interior of China, that stage always crashes on land, sometimes near residential areas. No word on where it crashed today.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
19 SpaceX
18 China
8 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
The U.S. still leads China 27 to 18 in the national rankings.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Interesting articles appearing today about Dong Jing Wei, high CCP muckety-muck who apparently defected with “terabytes” of information.
Somewhat ominous is that when I type “Dong Jing Wei” into DDG, nothing relevant comes out, but when I do the same with Google, the articles appear. Sort of the opposite to what I expected to happen.
Andi: DuckDuckGo uses the Bing search algorithms, which means in this case Bing is doing the censoring, not Google.
Both Bing and Google have no problem shadow-banning stories they don’t like. This is why it pays to use both DuckDuckGo (Bing) and Startpage (Google) to get a good spread of news, while maintaining your privacy.
An answer to the question about the booster.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=394358
FYI, Bob, you are the most quoted science correspondent on that site.
Gary: I should be their most quoted science correspondent. They post links to my articles every day, under the label “their intrepid science reporter.”