This week Hyperbola is off to the Oort cloud again for some R&R but will return with a fiery re-entry on Monday 16 November

credit Flight / caption: Are we looking at the future shape of China's unmanned cargo resupply spacecraft?

This 1:10 scale model of China's manned space engineering programme's Tiangong spacelab docked to a Shenzhou spacecraft was exhibited at the 60th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Daejeon, Korea in October

While talking to Chinese space programme officials in Daejeon Hyperbola was told about the cargo spacecraft that will be developed from the Tiangong spacelab, of which three could fly over the next ten years. China will use them to test technologies for rendezvous and docking, life support and experiment equipment destined for the space station  

See the cargo spacecraft design and in-orbit space station assembly pictures and video in the extended portion of this blog post 

credit: Virgin Galactic / caption: why the straigth wing and v-tail?

This design for Virgin Galactic's mini satellite launching rocket LauncherOne was shown by the company's small satellite launch general manager Adam Baker at the 60th International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea in October. For a more colourful LauncherOne design click through to the extended portion of this blog post

This video shows Norman Augustine's remarks at the 22 October 2009  US human spaceflight review final report publication press conference

These few weeks since the US review of human space flight report (overseen by Norman Augustine above) was published have seen commercial's future at NASA just get brighter and brighter, what with a new advisory committee and some shiny comments made by the agency's administrator Charles Bolden - backed up by remarks from his officials on deep background apparently

One wonders how these advisory committees could inform the process for developing the new spaceflight vision that Bolden is charged with giving Obama, at a meeting before year's end or by February 2010 according to this report and this report?

Will these committees engage with the flexible path option that has been getting some good press of late? And what can really be done along that path? To date there has been near Earth objects and Lagrange orbit talk and then Moon and Mars gets a mention - but where is the money coming from for any of these destinations?

Its something to consider if flexible path really is the new way forward because its appearences in the media are not from off the cuff remarks. This report shows that internally NASA has been thinking a lot about what it wants to do, and it started long before it got the final Augustine report

More an exercise in mass media gullibility than engineering as far as Hyperbola can tell Galactic Suites has certainly garnered plenty of press coverage going by its fancy and nebulous website

On a scale of one to ten of "things that will never happen" this project has got to be an eleven. The value of this video above, posted on Tuesday on Youtube, is its apparent new spaceship sequence - this blog hasn't found any earlier videos

So enjoy the Galactic Suites fantasy space tourism and go here for more videos of the same

Go here to see the video of Chen Shanguang, the chief commander and chief designer of China's Manned Space Engineering astronaut system speaking to China's state run English language news and current affairs channel CCTV-9. Go here for more China manned space programme CCTV videos and here for videos related to Shenzhou missions care of Google

Here is Flightglobal's recent Chinese Moon programme story with pictures of the country's latest concept for its space station planned for 2020. Find other Flightglobal stories about China's space programme here and go here for past Hyperbola blog postings about the new super power's orbital endeavours

Does this video show a revolutionary new propulsion system or is the rotation simply a byproduct of convection?

The British National Space Centre's technology and industrial policy deputy director has told Hyperbola that 2010 could see a workshop on the Emdrive to bring together the expertise to tackle the "underlying physical phenomena" that is seen in the video above

The video purports to show the microwave propulsion system known as the Emdrive produce enough static thrust to rotate a mass on an air bearing but other phenomena may be involved

Below is a presentation about Emdrive that is similar in its content to the presentation given by Emdrive's inventor Roger Shawyer yesterday here at the CEAS 2009. The two differ in that the presentation below gives information on Chinese and US interest in Emdrive, which Shawyer declined to answer questions on yesterday, while the presentation shown at CEAS had information about a vertical take-off and landing vehicle flight test programme   

Watch this video from the International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea where the future of the International Space Station was discussed by the ISS partners 

Go here for more IAC2009 videos

Videos from what used to be called the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight and is now the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight have been posted online care of Spaceport Sweden. Above is a video with Commercial Spaceflight Federation chairman and New Mexico Spaceport Authority executive director Steve Landeene and the other videos can be found here. The ISPCS took place this year from 21-22 October

Hyperbola Hyperbola and Flightglobal will report further on this Emdrive propulsion system and its applications later this week but for now here is a picture of the spaceplane proposed by Emdrive's UK inventor