It’s worth noting that the Zhuque-3 is considerably girthier than the Falcon-9, and unlike the Falcon-9, it actually has the ability to launch things into low-earth-orbit and return to the launch site. Currently, although the Falcon-9 can technically do so for higher, easier orbits, it has a minuscule payload capacity when returning to the launch site - this is why it lands downrange on a barge. ZQ-3 also uses much cleaner burning Methane fuel, meaning that it might stay usable after launch; the Falcon-9’s kerosene engines are dirty and require a full rebuild before the rocket can be used agian.

Both rockets use 1950’s Soviet gridfin tech, which for some reason people often assume SpaceX invented?

China currently has very high commercial launch demand too, so LandSpace won’t have any shortage of customers.

I’d wondered if that would happen. Just know that you’re appreciated for what you post, regardless of the name,

The US Navy can’t go back to steam catapults so they’ll just humor Trump and delay.

The issue with the USN’s half-century old steam catapults is that due to mechanical limitations, they operate at roughly the same power level every time. This is acceptable if you want to lob something heavy like a fighter jet into the sky on full afterburner decade-after-decade. Consider, however, for the sake of argument, that US Navy has increasingly gotten into the business of feeding vast numbers of expensive drones to Iranian air defense. If you try to fire a much lighter twin-towers-era unmanned wedding-bomber-drone off a carrier via a steam catapult, it tends to accelerate it to mach-fuck, which causes cumulative damage to both the drone and the catapult, which ultimately deprives the Iranians of their rightful and well earned dronefeast. Ripping the landing gear off a drone, or slamming the piston of a steam catapult at full-speed into the end of the catapult track is bad for the imperial machine, right??

Electromagnetic catapults can be precisely dialed in to the perfect power level for whatever you want to yeet. Perfect for when you want to toggle between tossing a murder-drone or a chudian Tom Cruise to war. - The issue with the hexbear-famous USS Gerald R Ford - the prototype which is set to replace the entire Nimitz fleet - is that to save weight and reduce complexity, the 4 catapults have their critical electrical systems paired. If one catapult fails or needs work, it takes out the adjacent catapult. This means that if your catapult fails in a critical moment, everything is twice as bad as it would be with a steam catapult. Obviously, this is a new system with many many new parts which can experience failures in new and exciting ways. This pairing issue is the thing I can see them resolving in future Ford-type carriers. I think they’re planning to build 5 more, pending the results of the USS Fords torturous hell-cruise. The advantage of a steam catapult is that failures were isolated to the specific catapult. You could launch as many Tom Cruisesque patriotic heroes as you wanted, even if the system was determined to fail and you could only launch him one at a time; regardless of how many people it took to rescue him after he got shot down by Iranian air defense on the cheap.

The US Navy is currently undergoing a naval design and building crisis, badly (extremely badly, actually) failing two large scale attempts to design a new class of ships; including one where the successful, proven blueprints were actually provided for them by their Europeon vassals, which they mangled beyond usability to the point where they declared the project a dead-end. The US at this point is simply rebuilding the same ship with some minor improvements from the usable standard-template-construct of the Arleigh Burke class that they’ve been building for 38 years with minor improvements. This class of warship is old enough that it even has its own dedicated TV show. – Their only latest, observable success is the Gerald R Ford, a 50 year overdue project which is THE ship of Hexbear styxian poop-starvation-laundry fire fame – and that’s, frankly, if you don’t include sheer the bullshit (sorry Iran, I support you, but don’t believe you) knifefight claims.

The worlds largest navy, the Peoples Liberation Army Navy, has never used steam catapults. Instead, they went straight from buying an old Soviet ski-ramp carrier from the Russians under clandestine (it’s a casino, an alter to capitalism, we promise) means for institutional training, to building an electromagnetic catapult carrier prototype carrier (Fujian). Fujian was commissioned in 2025 and has been used by the Chinese to rapidly learn the skillset of carrier operation. The Chinese have now begun implementing the lessons learned to build two (of six “planned”) new electromagnetic catapult carriers to operate stealth drones. These carriers will be the largest in the world, exceeding US "super"carrier designs, with the same number planned as the USS Gerald R Failure. The Chinese have decided to plan/build the same number of super-duper carriers for drone operations in defensive local ocean control as the US are even dreaming of building smaller next-gen carriers to maintain their crumbling fucking empire. Thing is, you know they’ll fucking do it, because the Chinese don’t bullshit this stuff, they just do it because they’re clear headed and have real, actually existing seriously (AES) industrial capacity with actual existing seriously (AES) leaders. Naval ships and naval policy are the true herald of national trajectory on the global state. The US Navy is failing, and being casually eclipsed by China - who builds a new warship factory every time the US even tries and fails to build a single prototype warship - and I think the Chinese will actually legitimately use them purely defensively to shield their meteoric rise. The US Navy and Trump is failing to the point that they lost a war against a nation of beautiful poets, and the only successful war they’ve prosecuted recently is against the worlds most dangerous bus driver, who sits in a cell accused of bullshit charges.

Socialism. Is. Winning.

Materialism is the dominant factor on this planet. Pretending only gets you so far, and the US has reached that limit.

It’s not intentional - the author has stated that he tries to avoid his stories being “woke”. The stories he writes often include themes about international cooperation to save something, and as such they tend to swerve around the liberal condemnation of “authoritarianism”. For western books, the idea of international cooperation means China/Russia featuring prominently coming to the rescue, but if Andy Weir was Chinese, the same trope would be, for example, a JAXA spacecraft helping out a beleaguered Taikonaut.

For a moment, consider how incredible it is that a movie clearing the low bar of “considering foreigners as human” is enough for us to ask if a movie is friendly to the idea of socialism.

I had a little vision of the future. Lathe touching time.

The distinction of the “second missile age” over the “first missile age” is the use of GPS systems for accurate terminal guidance to the point that conventionally-armed missiles have become a useful tool. All major powers have deployed/are deploying regional high-orbit GPS navigation systems. Some of those regional systems (BeiDou-2) are now global (BeiDou-3). Low-orbit data constellations like Starlink could theoretically also be doubled up as jamming platforms to drown out the higher-orbit navigation networks over certain areas, since all GPS constellations operate on the same narrow band of frequencies. Both of these constellation types (high-orbit GPS / low-orbit data) have dual purpose economic and military use, which assures their continued existence because they are a national boon rather than just a military expenditure.

Most space powers have anti-satellite missiles which can be used to hit low-orbit spy satellites, but in order to take out large numbers of low orbit satellites in string constellations like Starlink, you’ll need something with a better cost ratio; a mobile(ship/air) laser system which you can sit underneath the orbital string and fry them beyond use one by one.

Losing faith in Trump. He’s going to have to bomb a lot of brown people (presidential) to make up for the profanity (not presidential). #notmypresident

air defense IN-capability

They all seem to have been from recently reconstituted Avenger-equipped short range air defense regiments (1-57 ADAR / 1-55 ADAR). Against ballistic missiles they would have been about as effective as throwing confetti into the air. Sgt Rampersad was obviously a bit of an over-achiever because she spontaneously became unidentifiable flesh and bone confetti during the engagement.

Unfortunately, not Patriot or THAAD personnel.

Three Air Defense crew killed by ballistic missile pretty heavily implies the Iranians hit and degraded some kind of air defense capability.

I’m sure the Gulf Cooperating Cucks are absolutely thrilled that the US has decided to feed their powergrid to the Iranian targetbank piece by piece.

Intel Hexbear - Lots of RAF activity tonight out of Lossiemouth: warplanes, tankers, one Atlas transport flying south low with no active transponders.

Edit: Took Kid Starvers replacement less than 24 hours in office to permit the US operations out of UK bases.

Okinawa being the largest battle fought between the US and the Japanese in the pacific - noteworthy for being larger than the allied invasion of Normandy - is kind of ridiculous when you consider the Soviets, in a single battle, removed six times more Japanese soldiers from the war in a third of the time.

Critical support to the UK in resisting imperialism from the global south I guess.

Making a list, and checking it twice.

Tracking which journos are going on ice.

When revolution’s coming, to town.

Everything I’ve read from this woman makes it seems like she’s incredibly naive about how her work will be used and angled.

That’s a really old fashioned non-compressed gas storage. Looks impressive but it’s unlikely to cause many issues.

Knockout prideflag profile users continuing to prove its Lockheed Grumman Boeing Thales nature.

Some of you may die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

The eject button on the B-52 would shoot some of the crew downwards into the runway at high velocity. It can’t be used on takeoff.

Donald Trump humiliating himself by insisting he’s in charge while Israel openly defies him is pretty funny.

It’s all just theatre, but I hope it isn’t.

BBC News: Donald Trump has spoken to several US and international media outlets in the wake of Iran’s missile strike. Prior to his call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told US media outlet Axios that he planned to urge Netanyahu not to retaliate against Iran’s attack. The US president reiterated that message to Israel’s Channel 12 news, saying he did not want to see “an additional attack tonight”, according the Times of Israel. “The Iranian strikes didn’t hurt anybody,” Trump said. “Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don’t need another one.” – He added that he was going to call Netanyahu “right now and tell him not to retaliate”.