China Launches Space Station Module To Night!

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Rocket Fueled for China's 1st Space Lab Module Launch Thursday

by Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff Writer

China's Tiangong 1 space lab and its Chinese Long March 2F rocket is transferred to the launch site. CREDIT: China Manned Space Engineering View full size image

China is readying the rocket that will carry the country's first prototype space laboratory into orbit Thursday (Sept. 29).

Officials at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China have fueled the Chinese Long March 2FT1 rocket that will blast the unmanned Tiangong 1 module into space. The launch is slated to occur between 9:16 p.m. and 9:31 p.m. local time at the launch site (Thursday morning in the United States), according to state media reports.

Tiangong 1, which means "Heavenly Palace" in Chinese, will test docking technology with the country's Shenzhou spacecraft during a series of test flights over the next two years. [Photos: China's First Space Station]

The space lab module is 8.5 metric tons (9.4 short tons), and is 34 feet (10.4 meters) long and 11 feet (3.35 m) wide. Tiangong 1 is designed to spend two years in space before its mission is complete, Chinese space officials said.

"All the preparatory works before launching are finished," China's Manned Space Engineering office spokeswomanWu Ping told reporters at the launch site, according to a translation provided by the office.
The prototype was originally set to liftoff earlier this week, but a forecasted cold weather front forced mission controllers to push the targeted launch date, according to state media reports.


China's Tiangong 1 spacecraft and Long March 2F rocket is pictured at the launch site after being transferred from a facility at the Jiuquan Satellite Launching Center.
CREDIT: China Manned Space Engineering View full size image

China's space launch rally

China is expected to launch three additional spacecraft at a later time to connect with Tiangong 1 in space. The unmanned Shenzhou 8 mission is due to launch in early November to conduct the first docking tests between two Chinese spacecraft. The country then plans to launch the Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10 to robotically attach to the Tiangong 1 module.

"The main tasks of [the] Tiangong 1 spaceflight include: to provide a target vehicle for space rendezvous and docking experiment; to primarily establish a manned space test platform capable of long-term unmanned operation in space with temporary human attendance, and thus accumulate experiences for the development of the space station; to carry out space science experiments, space medical experiments and space technology experiments," Wu said.

Tiangong-1 space module to launch Thursday CCTV News - CNTV English

"It’s a big deal at several levels," said Dean Cheng, a research fellow on Chinese political and security affairs at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy think tank. "If all goes according to plan this will be China's initial effort at docking, and of course docking is one of those sin qua nons for more prolonged exploration of space. They have to get this skill set down."

China had originally planned to launch the space lab module earlier, but last month, a Long March 2C rocket, which is similar to Tiangong 1's Long March 2F booster, malfunctioned shortly after liftoff and failed to reach orbit. Chinese officials temporarily halted plans for Tiangong 1 as they investigated the accident, which resulted in the loss of an experimental satellite.


Take a look at how China's first space station, called Tiangong ("Heavenly Palace") will be assembled in orbit in this SPACE.com infographic.
CREDIT: Karl Tate/SPACE.com View full size image

China's growing space program

The launch of China's first space lab test module is considered an important milestone for the country and its growing space program. Chinese officials have voiced their intent to build a 60-ton manned space station by the year 2020. [Infographic: How China's First Space Station Will Work]

In addition to acting as an important test bed for these space station aspirations, Tiangong 1 will also carry medical and engineering experiments into space.

The module is expected to remain in orbit for two years, reported state news agency Xinhua.

China is only the third nation to independently launch humans into orbit, after the United States and Russia. The nation's first manned mission, Shenzhou 5, was piloted by Yang Liwei on Oct. 15, 2003. Liwei's 21-hour mission was followed by two more manned missions in 2005 and 2008.

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. SPACE.com senior writer Clara Moskowitz (@ClaraMoskowitz) contributed to this report. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Global data center building booms

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Three Googleplexes coming to Asia/Pacific

Image via CrunchBase

By Timothy Prickett Morgan • Get more from this author

The Great Recession didn't just throw cold water on server spending, it also slammed the brakes on data center buildouts. While server spending picked up in late 2009 and shipments recovered in 2011 to their pre-recession levels, it takes a bit longer to fund data center projects. But it looks like brick-and-mortar – and sometimes container-and–prefab module – construction for glass houses is starting to pick up.

Google, which doesn't quite have as much money or power as God – yet – is one of the largest data center operators in the world, and the company told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that it would be spending more than $200m to open three data centers to bring its search engines and myriad other services closer to Internet users (the raw material at Google) in that part of the world.

The Chocolate Factory told the Journal that it planned to plunk data centers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, with the data centers being operational within a year or two of the beginning of construction. The data centers will be located on facilities that have a combined acreage of around 20 hectares, with the actual glass houses (or containerized data centers or whatever Google does) ultimately taking up only a fraction of that space. Google has just opened up a chillerless, air-cooled data center in Belgium and another one that is located in an old paper mill and cooled by seawater in Finland. Google has six separate data centers in the United States with varying vintages of server and data center designs, located in Oregon, Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Oklahoma – and never too far from cheap electricity and fat phone lines.

As El Reg has previously reported, after a three-year hiatus, the data center construction is coming back to its pre-recession levels, with construction worldwide expected to reach $45bn in 2011, by some estimates.



To get a sense of what was going on out there in the glass houses, containers, and prefabbed units that are used to give protection from weather and people to servers, storage, and networks, London-based Datacenter Dynamics did a survey of data center operators who collective manage 100,000 faciliites worldwide with an aggregate of 7.7 million racks of gear. The survey was done in June and July of this year, and according to a report based on the survey, data center operators say they expect to add 7 per cent more to their facility count (or around 7,000 new data centers), boost racks by 15 per cent (or around 1.2 million new racks), and draw 19 per cent more juice for running this gear (or around 37 gigawatts all told). Data center investment in 2011 is estimated at around $30bn globally based on this sample, and will grow to $35bn next year.

Ranking the investment in data centers is a bit tricky. In terms of incremental growth in capacity, Turkey is the big grower, with an increase of 60 per cent in data center capacity from 2011 to 2012, followed by Brazil (up 45 per cent), Columbia (up 40 per cent), Argentina (up 36 per cent), Russia (up 29 per cent), and China (up 28 per cent). The eastern US is expected to grow by only 13 per cent, the central US by 12 per cent, and the western US by 3 per cent, according to estimates made by Datacenter Dynamics based on its survey data. The United Kingdom ranked 21st, with 5 per cent growth.

Source: Datacenter Dynamics, Industry Census 2011

But if you look at it by the amount of money that will be spent in 2012 based on what survey respondents told Datacenter Dynamics, then you get a completely different picture. The US rules, with $9.3bn in data center construction investment, followed by the UK, with $3.35bn, China ranked third, with $3.1bn in spending expected in 2012, followed by Germany, with $2.6bn, Australia with $2.45bn, and Brazil with $2.15bn. France, Italy, and Canada are close behind. ®

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Big Four auditors under pressure

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Big Four auditors under legal, EU pressure

 Authorities considering rules to break them up!

By Dena Aubin and Huw Jones NEW YORK/LONDON | Wed Sep 28, 2011

 

(Reuters) - The "Big Four" auditors face possibly their biggest shakeup since the Enron scandal as European authorities consider rules that could force them to break up, while the firms also are confronting multibillion dollar suits emerging from the subprime crisis.

The European Commission, according to a draft law seen by Reuters on Tuesday, is proposing that auditors be banned from providing consulting services to companies they audit, or even be banned altogether from consulting, a fast-growing business.

EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier is due to publish the draft in November, targeting what he sees as a conflict of interest when auditors check the books of the same companies from which they reap lucrative consultancy fees.

Leading potentially to break-ups, a ban on consulting would be the most punitive measure yet taken by regulators against the world's largest auditors -- Deloitte DLTE.UL, PwC PWC.UL, Ernst & Young ERNY.UL and KPMG KPMG.UL.

On another front, Deloitte was sued on Monday by a trust overseeing the bankruptcy of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp and one of its units claiming a combined $7.6 billion in damages. It is one of the largest lawsuits stemming from the 2007-2009 credit crisis.

Though auditors have been successful at winning dismissals of several crisis-related lawsuits, legal experts said some legal defences used by auditors in the past may have some holes when applied to the Deloitte case.

Deloitte has said the legal claims are "utterly without merit."

The Big Four review the financial books and records of most of the world's large corporations. The firms dodged a bullet during the era of the Enron and WorldCom frauds when U.S. regulators stopped short of an outright ban on consulting.

The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley audit industry reform laws limited the types of consulting services that auditors can provide to companies they audit, but the post-Enron laws left auditors free to pursue one another's clients for consulting work.



STRICTER MEASURES

The EU has been considering stricter measures since auditors gave clean bills of health to many banks that suffered debilitating losses during the credit crunch.

Auditors, which are privately held, do not disclose their insurance coverage or reserves held for legal awards, though most have been able so far to absorb the legal penalties stemming from the financial crisis.

According to Audit Analytics, the Big Four auditors have been named as defendants in at least two dozen class action cases stemming from the credit crisis through July 2011.

"There is a point at which the reputational damage combined with large judgments can do significant damage to their operations," said Andrea Kim, partner at Diamond McCarthy law firm in Houston.

It is unlikely, however, that any of the Big Four firms would be allowed to fail, given their role in auditing most of the largest companies in key markets, she said.

MONEY-MAKING ENTERPRISE

"You can safely assume that before we reach that level, what you're more likely to see is some legislative action," she said.

Sarbanes-Oxley was enacted after the disastrous meltdown of Enron auditor Arthur Andersen, which had been the fifth of the Big Five audit firms. Sarbanes-Oxley actually helped the remaining four firms by creating more rigid requirements and auditing work for them.

"The biggest beneficiary of Sarbanes-Oxley was the Big Four," Kim said. "It's just a giant money-making enterprise."

The measure being considered in the European Union would be far more stringent. In addition to potentially forcing auditors to split off their consulting businesses, it might include a requirement that auditors be "rotated," or changed, every nine years, forcing them to give up some of their best clients.

Another element of the draft includes the introduction of "joint audits," so the Big Four would share auditing work with smaller rivals.

A ban on consulting would be especially damaging now, as the auditors have been furiously expanding their consulting business to offset slower growth in their core audit area.

"Breaking up the Big Four audit firms would make them more susceptible to be taken over by emerging Chinese firms," a UK audit official said on Tuesday on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivities involved.

Barnier's spokeswoman said he had made it clear that the audit sector displayed clear failings during the crisis, giving banks a clean bill of health just before they were rescued.