Chinese pseudo-company launches four satellites from offshore launchpad
The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today used its Ceres-1 rocket to launch four satellites from an offshore launchpad located a few miles off the coast of Shandong Province in the Yellow Sea.
For the third straight time the government-run state press made no mention of this pseudo-company in reporting the launch. Instead, it was achieved by “China”, which is true since the company isn’t really private. It is a fake company created using investment capital and aimed at making money winning contracts, but everything it does is supervised by the communist government, which can take over operations and control of the rocket at any time. That the state-run press is no longer touting the private company suggests to me that the communists are greedily eyeing its success, and are thinking about stepping in to take over.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
62 SpaceX
39 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
In the national rankings, American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 71 to 39. It also still leads the entire world combined, 71 to 63, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) only 62 to 63.
Note: the world this year has so far achieved 134 successful launches, which only two years ago was a new record for the most global launches in a single year, breaking the previous record from 1966. Last year the world smashed that record, achieving 179 launches. It appears the world this year will smash last year’s record.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today used its Ceres-1 rocket to launch four satellites from an offshore launchpad located a few miles off the coast of Shandong Province in the Yellow Sea.
For the third straight time the government-run state press made no mention of this pseudo-company in reporting the launch. Instead, it was achieved by “China”, which is true since the company isn’t really private. It is a fake company created using investment capital and aimed at making money winning contracts, but everything it does is supervised by the communist government, which can take over operations and control of the rocket at any time. That the state-run press is no longer touting the private company suggests to me that the communists are greedily eyeing its success, and are thinking about stepping in to take over.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
62 SpaceX
39 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
In the national rankings, American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 71 to 39. It also still leads the entire world combined, 71 to 63, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) only 62 to 63.
Note: the world this year has so far achieved 134 successful launches, which only two years ago was a new record for the most global launches in a single year, breaking the previous record from 1966. Last year the world smashed that record, achieving 179 launches. It appears the world this year will smash last year’s record.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
but everything it does is supervised by the communist government, which can take over operations and control of the rocket at any time.
In a practical sense, not theoretically, this makes it different from SpaceX how, exactly?
markedup2: Unless we have entirely abandoned the rule of law and property rights and the fifth amendment to the Constitution, the feds can’t simply decide they like a company and confiscate it. They need to institute complex legal actions, such as eminent domain, and even that has to be justified within many limitations.
The Chinese government has no such limitations. It can, and has, stepped in and taken over other billion dollar operations, when it decided it wanted them. Just ask Jack Ma.
Robert,
Isn’t it a shame that the America we live in today has driven you to preface your comment with: “Unless we have entirely abandoned the rule of law and property rights and the fifth amendment to the Constitution“? In the old America, the pre-Obama America, land of the free, you would not have even thought of using that preface. You would have merely written: “[T]he feds can’t simply decide they like a company and confiscate it. They need to institute complex legal actions, such as eminent domain, and even that has to be justified within many limitations.”
What a shame it is that our country has devolved into such a state of tyranny that markedup2 would even ask the question. His civics classes and his American experience should have given him the answer without thought — should have preempted the very thought of the question.
Welcome to Obama’s fundamentally transformed America, land of the formerly free.
Edward: Though I will never dispute your assertion that Obama was and remains one of the principal contributors to the corruption of this once great land, I still say the corruption began with Bill Clinton and the decision of the Democrats to place the maintenance of power above the rule of law by letting him get away with perjury, illegal campaign donations from China, and many other illegal acts. It also started in 1996 when the voters chose to go along with those Democratic Party decisions in Congress, and re-elect that party into power with little harm.
Once that happened, the Democrats realized they could literally get away with anything, and we are now seeing the results.
“Once that happened, the Democrats realized they could literally get away with anything, and we are now seeing the results.”
If that is the measure, then I would go back to Chappequiddick. By allowing Ted Kennedy to get away with drowning Miss Kopechne, the Democratic voters ushered-in this era of non-accountability.
Edward: With the case of Kennedy, Chappequiddick only showed us the future mentality of Democratic Party voters, by exhibiting the blindness of those Democrats in Massachusetts. Across the rest of the country, even among Democrats, Chappequiddick forever ended any chance of Ted ever getting the White House. Most Americans then did have some standards, even Democrats.
Those standards all vanished with Democrats when Clinton arrived.
Robert Zimmerman,
“Those standards all vanished with Democrats when Clinton arrived.”
Maybe those standards, but America rejected Hillarycare, which was similar to Obamacare, but with less central control, so with Obama, all the rest of the standards disappeared. With Obama, America became to be thought of as an evil empire that needed to be knocked down, and thought of as having always been one.
The attitudes in the 1990s, with Clinton, were very different than they are now. America was not yet ready to cave in to a Marxist, as the Hillarycare debacle demonstrates. Clinton did not weaponize entire government agencies, as Obama did; government had not taken sides in the elections. Clinton did not say that he would fundamentally transform America, nor did he institute a policy in which government would reward his friends and punish his enemies. We still lived in the same America in which we grew up. Tyranny was not ingrained into America until Obama dropped the Fabian system of gradually introducing Marxism (because Americans couldn’t take the shock) and instead went all in with Marxism and its necessary tyranny.
This is not Clinton’s America. Clinton would have never done this to the country, and the few minor things that he did do, he expressed regret in the years following his presidency.
This is Obama’s America, fundamentally transformed as he had promised. Obama has expressed no regret in making this transformation.
We may be disagreeing on some fine details as to what constitutes the fundamental transformation, but Obama pulled out all the stops and flooded the ship of state, foundering the intention of the Founding Fathers to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” The generation of Americans that were singing grade-school songs of loyalty to Obama, in his first year or two occupying the White House, will never know the liberties that we enjoyed, before Obama took the White House.
The central control of Obamacare is not liberty. The interference of government agencies in our elections and our commerce is not liberty. Liberty is being left alone by government, allowing us maximum freedom with minimal regulation and laws. Government has only three purposes, as laid out in the Constitution’s Preamble: Defend us from all enemies, foreign and domestic; provide as a disinterested third party to resolve disputes; and stay out of our way. The last one is the definition of liberty.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/liberty
liberty
[ lib-er-tee ]SHOW IPA
noun,plural lib·er·ties.
freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
Clinton still believed in liberty. We had liberty at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. We did not at the end of Obama’s.
This is definitely Obama’s fundamentally transformed America, land of tyranny and injustice.