But halfway around the globe, a little-known Chinese town tucked against the Tibetan Plateau could change all that.<\/p>\n
In late March, the government of the city of Ziyang said a research facility successfully tested a high-temperature superconducting navigation system, which they said was a breakthrough in electromagnetic rocket launch technology.<\/p>\n
Through this and several other similar programmes across the nation, Chinese scientists<\/a> are working on a way to catapult rockets off the ground using electricity, before the chemical engines ever kick in.\u201cThe concept of building an electromagnetic launch orbit in the high-altitude and thin-air areas of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was proposed by some particularly bold and talented young people within China\u2019s space industry<\/a> more than two decades ago,\u201d a Beijing-based space scientist said last week. He spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media.<\/p>\n \u201cMany difficulties will be encountered during the implementation of this project, but it is feasible from an engineering perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But halfway around the globe, a little-known Chinese town tucked against the Tibetan Plateau could change all that.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[4177,87904,607,7879,516,251374,251373,111,139,69,251369,147,251370,392,1503,251368,235220,251371,251372,251375],"class_list":["post-503871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-beijing","tag-casic","tag-china","tag-chinese-academy-of-engineering","tag-elon-musk","tag-hiwing-technology-academy","tag-ma-weiming","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-qinghai-xizang-plateau","tag-science","tag-sichuan-online","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-sputnik","tag-tibetan-plateau","tag-ziyang","tag-ziyang-commercial-aerospace-launch-technology-research-institute","tag-ziyang-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}