China's new Space shuttle?

 The race for Space is now on!

The peoples republic of China has launched its third secret Space shuttle mission in the last year and this craft is believed to be remotely controlled, but it could be manned? 

Meanwhile it is not known what the mission is for as yet and with the block on the Internet by the United States it perhaps will be some time!

During this operation the U.S. cancelled two flights that of the DragonX and its own year long X-37 missions, one again does not know why, but later both were launched into orbit!

Many other countries now are in the possession of ballistic missiles such as Iran and N-Korea and despite what they have achieved on their own they too will want to do similar to what has been done, if not go further a field as what India has done in getting to Mars and the Sun!

NASA Adopts X-Planes.

A British Concept.

I am a bit limited to my night sky videos of only the Moon, since it is the nearest object in the night sky to catch apart from the International Space Station (ISS).  NASA has announced this year, 'That it has found a replacement to its former Space Shuttle, quite a profound bit of tech.'

The Space Shuttle was really 1960's tech in the 1990's and even beyond the millennium was costing a fortune to maintain. A mini shuttle (X37) was developed to carry out sole military operation and was secret, until the amateur astronomers observed its orbits.

The X-Plane that is now being considered was a British concept thought up by the Astronomical Society in the 1970-80's in Vauxhall, London. U.K. 

This concept aircraft could be launched either by rocket platform, as the Shuttle or take off on the piggy back of another larger aircraft and fire off in high altitude into Space. 

It would then make its return under its own power just like a conventional aircraft, where as the Space Shuttle was really a giant glider. If the X-Plane concepts are ever built, we will have our first true Space Ships, now that Star Trek marks its 50th Anniversary.