...(Briefly OT: It feels slightly surreal to be posting this, as if everything is normal and okay. It isn't. This election has been an absolutely disaster for the country that I love, and it's even worse in my home state of Oregon, where we just enshrined vile biggotry and hatred into our state constitution. I am filled with enormous sadness, disgust, and fear. Enduring four more years of Bush is one thing. Enduring 30 more years of the sort of Supreme Court justices that he will appoint -- given his record on judicial appointees, highly theocratic and fascistic ones -- is unthinkable. Given that, and debt bubble which will eventually pop to a devestating effect, and the G.O.P.'s growing disrespect for electoral processies, I am fairly sure that we have just witnessed the last free American election. I will begin looking for other countries to move to, early next year. For now, I'm in mourning.)

Anyhow, that's not what I wanted to post about. This is. Apparently China has noticed the SS1 flights, and are saying that commercial spaceflight will be a reality in China within 20 years. This is something I've never seen them say before. I'm curious what avenues for the commercialization of their technology they're opening up. I'm also curious to see -- if three SS1 flights pushed them this far -- how they'll react to hundreds of SS2 flights, beginning two and a half years from now. I suspect they'll need to adjust their schedule forward even more.

Another thing I'm curious about: a SS1-type craft would be extremely useful to China -- basically for the purpose of taking on-demand satellite-class photos across the Taiwan Straits. (Orbiting spysats aren't good enough for this, since the Taiwanese are surely aware of when the flyovers occur, and can cover things up accordingly. That's what we did when Soviet spysats would fly over during the cold war.) This cannot have escaped China's attention. I wonder what they're doing about it. They would certainly be able to put together a SS1-class vehicle, now that they know it can be done.

For that matter, so would Taiwan. Same goes for both of the Koreas, as well as India, Pakistan, Iran, and Israel and some of its neighbors, for essentially the same reasons. I doubt that this has escaped their attentions; I wonder what all of them are doing about it?

Curious despite everything,

Nathan.