China Sends First Taikonaut To Space

tuxlove writes "Space.com reports that China has just successfully launched its first manned space mission. "Blasting off from a remote space base in the Gobi Desert atop a Long March 2F rocket, a single Chinese astronaut named Yang Liwei is on his way to circle the planet every 90 minutes aboard the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft. As a result, China has become only the third nation on Earth capable of independently launching its citizens into orbit. " Perhaps this will kick the US space program back into gear?" aerojad points to this Reuters report, about which he says "The article is short on details, aside from 'Xinhua said the craft carried astronaut Yang Liwei, 38. The launch on Wednesday, 42 years after the Soviet Union put the first man into space, marked a milestone for China's secretive space programme, which analysts say has its sights set on a manned mission to the moon.' The mission is due to end in 21 hours." zxm adds a link to China Daily's coverage, and puiwah to a story on MSNBC.

Congratulations!

[panserg]

It's good to see one more nation in the space. Go China!

GO CHINA!

[lommer]

Given the comments I've heard recently here on slashdot, I think I speak for many of us when I say GO CHINA!

Sincerest congratulations to the Chinese. I hope everyone here realizes what a momentous occaision in history has just occured - This may well be remembered as the beginning of the second space race.

Re:Nice Troll, but...

[Narphorium]

So how do you propose that they sart their space program? Should they have just started with a manned mission to Mars?
I don't think its very practical to suggest that just because a couple of countries have already done it, that anyone who now wishes to start a space program of their own are obliged to break new ground on their very first manned mission.

The Hardware Design is Serious

[Tewley]

There's an article [msnbc.com] by James Oberg, space expert, on the spacecraft hardware design decisions the Chinese have made. To sum it up -- they are indeed very serious about being in this game for the long haul (or Long March, whatever).

They took their sweet time for a very good reason, and have every intention of leapfrogging past the mistakes of the US and Russians. Slow and steady wins the race.

Re:The tricky part

[CheshireCatCO]

Eh, not entirely. Like with aircraft, the most dangerous bit tends to be launch and landing. (Note that of the three cases of fatalities, one was on the launch pad (for a test, but I'd say it still is indicative), one was just after launch, and the final was on landing.) Landing tends to be most coasting/parachuting, which is relatively easy to do right. In fact, you can make it very safe by clever design of the module. (I believe that the Mercury and Apollo capsules were actually designed to always tend to re-enter in the correct orientation.)

Launch is more dangerous in some ways if only because you've got X tons of very flammable (dare I say explosive?) materials under your butt. A slip-up there will tend to be much harder to fix or escape from.

How will the world react in the long-term?

[Dukeofshadows]

I congratulate the Chinese on their achievement, it is truly awesome for them to put a man in orbit. However I have to wonder about how the world, especially the US, will react in the long-term to an accelerating Chinese space program. Mayalsia has announced that it wants to send a cosmonaut up to the ISS, India has hinted that it wants a manned space program, Japan has a shuttle in the works, and the European Space Agency has yet to even plan for manned space travel after the Hermes shuttle failed to materialize.

Overall this may be the spark of a new space race. No one wants to see their neighbors achieve a presence in space that they cannot reach, thus we open the door for half-a-dozen groups to begin sending men into space for political and scientific purposes. China has already announced that they intend to build their own station in orbit to compete with the ISS, and old USSR/Russian technology/training is for sale to whoever can afford it (India, ESA, USA, etc.). If manned spacefaring technology is truly the passport to being a first-rate power of the 21st century, we will see almost every nation with ballistic missile technology attempting at least some sort of manned spaceflight capacity.

Thus a new space race may prove detrimental since most of the technology is dual-use. No doubt, it would be uber-cool to have observatories on the backside of the moon and a space station comparable to those seen only in sci-fi platforms thus far. Microwave solar power systems like those under development at the University of Kyoto could solve most of the world's power problems. Yet these also become quite potent orbital weapons capable of incinerating missile silos, labs, and cities is "accidentally misalinged". Space rockets were ballistic missiles, and the whole of composite materials, microcomputers, velcro, and hosts od other civilican and military discoveries trace their way back to the Space Race of the 1960s.

At worst we might be seeing the beginnings of a new arms race. Hopefully the initiative by China will evolve into an independent space station that goads India, Japan, the ESA, and USA to seriously pump funding back into their own programs and develop the spacefaring technology of 2001 by 2051. Maybe whoever said, "the 1960s were a decade transplanted from the 21st century because of the space race" will be proven right after all. If the US does not get off its duff soon, we may see a Chinese camera on the moon looking at two taikonauts wondering whether to take down the American flag still found at the Sea of Tranquility before we know it.

Anyone else have any thoughts/comments?

Re:GO CHINA!

[why-is-it]

This may well be remembered as the beginning of the second space race.

If so, it will be interesting to see whether history judges it to have been worth it. I would think that there are immediate problems down here on earth that need to be solved and spending lots of money on a really interesting dream may not be the best way to allocate scarce resources...

On a separate note, I wonder if the people who argue that NASA faked the moon landings will question this as well?

Re:Nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Confucius say, he who would walk far must take first step.

Linux and spaceships

[poppycock]

Despite recent advances in economic freedoms, China is still a dangerous totalitarian regime. In the west, we rail against the abuses of the State, and rightly so, but the abuses of the west are nothing compared to China.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/china0803/2.htm#_T oc49242552 [hrw.org]

http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/nasia/china/ [derechos.org]

http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1997/1/30_7.html [tibet.ca]

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/ [gwu.edu]

To say "Go China" is to deny the real and substantial differences between liberal democracies and repressive regimes. I can say that W is a dummy with impunity in the US. Chinese citizens can't do likewise. These freedoms make forums like slashdot possible, and are directly responsible for the wealth and privilege that I and many many others in western democracies enjoy.

I hope that China will join the community of nations that protects the rights of the individual. Maybe the power they now have will help them, and the rest of us, fulfill the promise of the American Declaration of Independence. In the meantime, don't make the deadly and dangerous mistake of confusing interesting technology with "good." Linux and spaceships can be used for good and evil.

Re:Not Impressed

[subliminal_fugue]

It's one thing to design something yourself, and quite another to take a complete design that already works and tweak it.

Like we oh-so-clever Yanks did with the WWII German designs and follow-ons by German engineers?

Thought so.

Re:Remove the log in your own eye...

[Wyatt Earp]

The policies of the G8 do not lead to starvation in Africa. Africans die because of a lack of infrastructure.

Life isn't far, the economic policies of the G8, the EU, NAFTA aren't far all the time to all the people.

However the G8 and EU and NAFTA are not executing people who refuse to move from thier farms to a factory city. The G8 and EU and NAFTA are not machine-gunning protesters in thier respective capitals, nor are the G8 and EU and NAFTA causing 8 to 10 million to die a year by forcing collectivization.

If I sounded high and mighty, I'm sorry, but I know that the successes and failures of the American Space Programs didn't come from slave labor, prisoning scientists who fail and aren't built on the bones of the millions who didn't die during the Dust Bowl of the 30s or the hard winters of the late 50s or 60s.

The Soviet and Communist Chinese industrial and scientific successes are built on the bones of millions of dead.

Re:GO CHINA!

[Moofie]

You know, anybody who thinks that space research and development isn't ABSURDLY PROFITABLE need only look at the tax revenue generated by the communications satellite industry, and compare that to NASA's budget for, say, the last 50 years.

So far, space exploration has been CHEAP. Thinking that you have better ways to spend the $1 your taxes contributed to NASA's budget this year is just ridiculous. There are A LOT of other places we could carve out serious money from the federal budget. NASA is small potatoes.

Speaking of agriculture, how much did we pay people to not grow stuff this year? Just checking.

An aside: I think NASA is doing a terrible job of exploring and exploiting space. Yet another unmanned probe is just not enough to get people engaged in space travel. The science is great, but the real reason to go to space is to explore new frontiers, and settle them. Anything that does not aim directly at that goal is wasting time.

Humans are, by nature, explorers. I believe that much of the strife and ennui we feel today is because we don't have the hope of being able to go to a new place, and make it a home. I believe that the best and the brightest have always been willing to settle new lands, and I would LOVE to be one of the next generation.

Big Prestige Boost

[hengist]

My wife is Chinese, and she is very excited about and proud of this launch. Don't underestimate how much this event will boost their national pride.

Re:How will the world react in the long-term?

[Moofie]

How cool would it be if the Chinese explorers put the American flag back up, and planted a Chinese flag next to it?

Call me a jingoist, but I just get goosebumps from the symbolism. That would be an incredible, gallant gesture.

Re:How will the world react in the long-term?

[tftp]

I don't think it is wise to divide the world into two categories - one of "dangerous" countries, and another of conquered countries. China is not dangerous at all; it is simply powerful. There are lots of other countries (Pakistan & India, Israel, North Korea, and don't forget USA itself) which are far more dangerous.

Fido-to-go.

[Channard]

Fucking clueless idiots - our pets are their tortured food. If anyone did that to my dog, I would torture them and feed their carcass to a large dog.

Because, of course, dogs being cute and fluffy and cows not being cute and fluffy puts them in a completely different league. Unless you're a vegetarian, it's pretty hypocritical to complain about people eating cats and dogs while regularly shoving cow parts down your jaded throat. Just because we've deigned a certain animal as a pet, it doesn't magically transcend to some level above cows and pigs. Meat is meat.

Re:The tricky part

[rodgerd]

Of course, most Americans are still in denial about their Nazi driven space program. Does this mean the Russians are doing better in the honesty stakes?

Re:How will the world react in the long-term?

[Mostly a lurker]

I agree with you that being "powerful" does not automatically mean "dangerous". However, history has shown that China, like the US, will tend to project its power when the opportunity presents itself. China is potntially extremely dangerous and I expect the next global conflict to be caused by a spat between the US and China.

Re:That's because CNN is a US Govt mouthpiece

[the argonaut]

I think you need to stop getting your history from your much-celebrated "U.S. media". The sixties space race was just as much a piece of nationalist propaganda as China's space program is today. It was as much about discrediting communism as it was anything else. The first satellite, the first astronaut were all serious embarrasments for the "leader of the free world", and the last thing the U.S. government was going to do at that point was let the Soviets beat them again.

Continuing, I don't know how you can say that the U.S. has the most diverse media in the world. You're extrapolating from the fact that yes, there are a large number of media sources ultimately available, but the fact remains that the majority of the news reoprted here comes from a very small number of large media corporations, whose loyalty to actually reporting the news is very questionable (i.e., Disney/ABC, General Electric/NBC, Westinghouse/CBS, The "vast right-wing conspiracy"/Fox, Time Warner/CNN). The existence of all those other media sources is irrelevant, as they realistically constitute a very small portion of the media spectrum, and not the portion that influences public opinion. Compare this to Europe, where a the media is more evenly divided between a greater number of news agencies, who arguably represent a larger spectrum of views, given the European tendency for individual media outlets to be far more ideological. Of course, when you compare the U.S. to the rest of the world, you're probably just thinking about Russia or Cuba...

Get off your high horse. The U.S. has a number of good things going for it, but your posting is way too in the vain of "America uber alles" nationalism to be taken seriously. If you're afraid to seriously critique and recognize the flaws in your own country, then you're also unreliable as a source of praise.