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BBC News reports that the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft with two taikonauts has successfully docked with China's second space station (their first station, Tiangong-1, was also recently in the news, because it is dropping from orbit).
The Shenzhou-11 spacecraft blasted off from northern China on Monday, and docked with Tiangong 2 at 03:24 Beijing time (19:24 GMT Tuesday).
Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong will be spending the next 30 days in space conducting experiments.
It marks the longest space mission by Chinese astronauts.
The docking took place 393km (244 miles) above Earth and the remotely controlled procedure lasted about two hours, according to state media.
The docking took place in the early hours of Wednesday morning Beijing time.
State television on Wednesday morning carried live video of the docking and arrival of the astronauts, or "taikonauts", which saw them floating through a narrow 1m-long, 80cm-wide passageway into the lab.
The pair "extended greetings to all the people of the nation," while onboard the laboratory, according to the Xinhua news agency.
More links:
http://www.ecns.cn/2016/10-19/230722.shtml
I'm curious why they have only 2 crew this time instead of 3. Maybe they needed the extra space for the food experiments?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:46PM
There is no 'space', at least not in the way it is being presented by modern astronomy.
This 'space program' as it is being presented here is a hoax, with NASA being the main actor and other "space agencies" following suit.
Launches are smoke-and-mirrors events where you are not shown the actual meat (but only CGI) and the "internal" shots are shot on blue screens and "zero-g" planes, whereas the external ones are shot in a swimming pool.
The solar radiation is powerful enough to melt most metals "up in the thermosphere": for this reason alone, it is impossible for satellites to be the orbiting machines that they are supposed to be.
If you try to detect a spin and a curvature for the Earth, you will find none, never. Those "space programs" are here to help maintain the illusion of the "blue marble", spinning ball-like Earth.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:05PM
You surely also have an explanation of the things that one can sometimes see as clearly visible bright moving spot on the sky which are commonly claimed to be satellites? And can explain why they move exactly as they should move if there was indeed a space where satellites orbit?
And you probably can also tell us where the TV signals those satellite dishes receive come from when up there nothing could survive the solar radiation, right?
And about the curvature of earth, what is your explanation that you can see farther is you are higher? And that for approaching ships on the sea, you see the upper parts before you see the lower parts? And why ships (including private ships that cannot be part of some global conspiracy) which use that "wrong" spherical geometry of earth for navigation quite reliably get to where they want to get?
What is your explanation that the apparent height of the polar star over the horizon changes if you go north or south, and it gets invisible when you cross the equator southwards?
I think if you want to convince us that the earth is not (approximately) spherical and surrounded by space, you'll have to do a lot of explanations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:46PM
He'll have answers for all that and more. Numbnuts is completely hopeless. Just mod him to -1, and don't reply to him.
Well… unless numbnuts is trying to do something about the low comment counts on space stories. I'm just not sure that's a healthy solution.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:39PM
Meta: I don't have to browse at -1 to know what you two are talking about. But i'm curious when that copypasta can be marked as -1 spam? At what point does it go from bad trolling to spam?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:54PM
The admins review every spam mod. Why waste their time? And AFAICT it isn't a copypasta.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday October 19 2016, @08:08PM
Because at some point wasting X user mod points is more than wasting an admin's time. That was my question, what is the value of X? When does it go from wasting a bunch of people's time to actual spam.
Just like this comment has probably pushed too far into the OT and risking a negative mod there : P
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:19AM
I had thought that saying it isn't a copypasta was enough of an answer. If it were, I would have used the spam mod.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:34PM
Love the irony of Science Deniers using the products of science to post their opinions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:43PM
Robert Anton Wilson was only joking!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:06PM
Didn't the doctor tell you that you should take your meds every day at the same time?
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:35PM
Please explain how time zones work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @08:16PM
Please explain how time zones work.
Because the Sun is a more localized phenomenon, works more like a spotlight ("hotspots" have been spotted from high-altitude balloons, not consistent with a distant Sun) and is not as high as NASA and modern astronomy tells you. The Sun circles around the plane much like the hour hand circles on the surface of a clock, illuminating locally. Perspective, atmospheric attenuation and perhaps a limited range for the propagation of sunlight prevents you from seeing it all the time (same as attenuation from water keeps deep waters in perpetual darkness)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 20 2016, @12:25AM
The magic field of the Disc slows the light down.
It's explained in the reference manual [chrisjoneswriting.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fritsd on Wednesday October 19 2016, @08:10PM
Then please explain satellite beam footprints: http://satbeams.com/footprints [satbeams.com]
(click on the "75°E ABS-2" icon on the line. Those diagonal tic-marks are supposed to represent TV satellites. I bet the website uses lots of Javascript.)
I can easily get the ABS-2 (75°E) Russia beam, I have watched Tajikistan TV on it. That means I have direct line-of-sight with a satellite positioned over the Maldives (hey, how cool is THAT!). As long as I push my dish almost as far diagonal as it goes.
Good reception, 41000 kilometers away. Elevation angle is 5.7° for me, according to satbeams.com.
*However*, I cannot get the Horizons 2 (85°E) at all, even though it has a much stronger beam aimed at my position (well, aimed at Russia; I get the overshoot, if you know what I mean).
Horizons 2 is 41500 kilometers away.
Satbeams.com does a complicated goniometrical calculation and claims that 85°E is at 1.3° elevation above the horizon for me, which would explain why I can't watch it.
But if, as you claim, our Earth is flat, then the elevation should change only slowly as the tangent of a very small angle, right?
Now please explain why the Russians get satellite beams from both 75°E and 85°E, but the Swedes get only from 75°E?
Any solutions? (Don't tell me to build a ginormous tower and put the dish on top of that; I've already considered that, and it was impractical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @07:46PM
Beams from "satellites" originate from ground-based stations: those bounce the signal against the sky. Short-wave radio works like this, as does tropospheric scattering, and radio signals generally bounce against things which creates various possibilities for their propagation.
I also use "satellite" dishes. Never once did I have to use them by pointing them exactly south: to get a signal for my neighboring country to my east, I point my dish east and adjust the elevation until I maximize the reception lobe. However, a signal is picked up in less that one position, which is something geometrically consistent with being on a plane and reflecting waves against a ceiling.
So: receiving a signal "from above" does not prove the existence of orbiting machines; nor does a limiting angle prove a spherical shape for the Earth, as this can also occur as a condition fro a planar geometry (a limit for the incident angle small enough where crisp reflections are no longer possible, for example). And aircraft have the communication GPS bundle on their belly (that is, facing the ground, not the sky where the alleged satellites exist)
I never, ever have ever seen one of those magic, invisible, "geostationary" satellites. Nor has anybody else.
Please watch the recent launch from India's "space agency" and you will clearly see in their own footage that the payload-carrying rocket instead of acquiring escape velocity or similar, makes a stop, turns more than 90 degrees, and starts falling. How is that consistent with the launch of a geostationary satellite? That rocket should be speeding miles per seconds, not sitting around and making handbrake turns. Unless it is smoke and mirrors and balloons.
I am not convinced of this "space program". I do not know if the Earth is actually flat, but I am certainly not convinced that it is a spinning globe, with "satellites" "orbiting it".
(Score: 1) by segwonk on Friday October 28 2016, @05:07AM
"I never, ever have ever seen one of those magic, invisible, "geostationary" satellites. Nor has anybody else."
Wow. Poe's Law comes into play here. I can't tell if this is a brilliantly detailed troll, or if the writer actually believes is.
Come on dude, really? In this day & age? Why are you an anonymous coward? Why don't you sign in & publish your fever dreams under a name?
.......go til ya know.