It is no secret that China has major space aspirations. China has been spending more than $3 billion annually on its space program, on everything from developing a domestic satellite manufacturing capability to building a modern fleet of expendable launch vehicles. The budget continues to grow, as does the diversity and ambitiousness of the Chinese program. There is no better example of this than Shenzhou.

Shenzhou (“Divine Vessel”) is a Chinese manned capsule. It is based on Russia’s Soyuz re-entry crew capsule. Four unmanned test flights of a prototype Shenzhou occurred during 1999-2002. The first manned Shenzhou was carried out on October 15, 2003.

Dear Fellow Historical Number Crunchers,

To understand our industry’s future, set the Wayback Machine to 1967. It was a year of weird dynamics, with booming demand, but paradoxical economics. The military market’s strength effectively crowded out the civil side of the industry. This resulted in McDonnell Aircraft taking over Douglas Aircraft. There are big lessons for today.

Dear Fellow Bubble Watchers (Part 2, the Sequel),

It’s déjà vu all over again. I have distant memories of Very Light Jet/Air Taxi arguments from the 2000s, and now, as Advanced (or Urban) Air Mobility emerges, with similar business cases, aspirational goals, and utopian greed, all that air taxi nonsense is flooding back (albeit with much shorter aircraft ranges). Thanks to vast pools of cash sloshing around in the economy, AAM concepts are now proliferating. I feel like that Greek guy who got a job killing monsters. Chop one head off, and three, or 20, will grow in its place. A series of SPACs will then offer these monster heads $5 billion (on paper), enabling, and encouraging, even more monsters to sprout.

I’ve been getting lots of calls lately from reporters who are covering the adventures of Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and their companies. But let’s not forget that the legacy companies remain in the picture. They are concerned that they may be getting eclipsed by the new guys on the block, but I wouldn’t count them out just yet. Boeing, for example.