Kryten

The only difference between when dogs were initially domesticated and 'the modern day' is that we know the details of selective breeding and do it deliberately. The domestication of dogs would have been a massively protracted, gradual process extending over hundreds of years; it took the soviets about 30 years to make domesticated foxes.

I... what? Seriously? Do you not know what a dog even is?

TBH Chinese crewed launches aren't that much more common than US ones these days (next one is late 2015 at the earliest), so that's not it. It's more likely to be the Chinese deploying some pretty large satellite constellations (COMPASS, Tianlian, various civilian imaging sats) while the US is content to maintain existing ones.

All launches considered to be under US or PRC jurisdiction. That'd include all launches from facilities within and/or owned by the US/PRC, commercial or government, but not government launches on foreign rockets. I don't think either government purchased any foreign launches in that (or quite possibly any) timeframe.

Fun fact; China matched the US in successful orbital launches in 2010, and exceeded their totals in '11 and '12.

...according to a wikipedia article entirely sourced from a single item in a Norwegian tabloid. Don't believe everything you come across on the internet.

Two of your examples are from people with no actual power to do anything except notify higher ups that they see something on the screen (doctrine for both USSR and US at the time was not to launch until they'd had confirmed detonations of nuclear devices), and as the third, well, to quote the article itself 'citation needed'.

'It seems' from what exactly? The only 'non-chemical' propulsion systems they've been working on since the collapse are ion engines, and they'd been been using those since the 70's anyway.

The US space program(/s) is(/are) a lot bigger than NASA. Whenever a spysat or weather satellite is launched, for example, it's a joint effort of NOAA/the NRO and the USAF, and NASA doesn't get a dime. Anything military in space other than recon is pretty much purely the USAF's remit.

Point out people working on radio telescopes and/or ABM radars don't just instantly drop dead? Or you could just go with the 'light is a form of radiation' routine.

Does 'copy right' also prevent you from even giving the name of the book?

The Cola-Cola company makes syrups for making drinks. That's all they do. They don't do their own bottling, never mind make vending machines.

The Russians can't do it. Their supposed next lander has, since being announced, been delayed by more years than it's actually existed as a project. The design's based on Phobos-grunt...

Really? tenchars

China's nuclear doctrine is what they call 'minimal credible deterrence'; which is why they've only got maybe 250 nukes and a few dozen ICBMs, compared to thousands and hundreds of both respectively for Russia and the US. This... wouldn't exactly fit with that, even if we pretended it was technologically plausible.

No, the standard evasive procedure was to not overfly significant amounts of territory with modern missile systems (i.e. USSR or PRC); they'd learned their lesson after declaring the U-2 'invincible' due to altitude and then having seven shot down. Why did you think they came up with the M-21/D-21 concept? They knew they needed something even faster and higher to survive under those conditions, and that it had a good chance of not doing so regardless.

If you want NASA's requirements specifically, they should be here somewhere. The educational requirements are easy enough to find, but I haven't yet come across anything but a few criteria of the 'NASA flight physical' you have to pass.

There's no plausible mechanism other than life for a thick atmosphere with high levels of oxygen (or a bunch of other reactive gases), and this can be detected using spectral studies.

First CCDEV flight planned 2016 or 2017, and first crewed Orion flight by 2021; ISS is funded to 2020 and will probably be extended to 2028; and the Chinese have used off-the shelf russian-built Orlan suits on at least one Shenzhou mission.

Nope, too small. They do plan to use the design for a sort of robotic miniature Apollo architecture on Chang'e 5, but returned mass is something like 2kg.

The second one was (and still is) in a different hangar, and is something like 95% complete. Main problem with restarting the program is Energiya, not Buran itself.

They also had much more capable launch vehicles, at least initially (compare the first launchers of each-Juno-C; ~10kg to LEO: Sputink; >1 ton to LEO). This is partly due to a larger focus on missiles for strategic missions, and partly due to needing to push larger warheads with said missiles.

The ones rotting in fields are structural test articles and mockups, not real spacecraft. The shuttle mockups aren't fairing much better.

If by 'without a telescope' you mean 'with binoculars', fair enough. If you mean 'with your naked eyes'... let's just say it'd be a first.

But how would the Chinese be able to film inside the hollow earth when it's full of Nazis?