China Launches Third Unmanned Space Capsule

Guppy06 writes: "As you read this China's third unmanned (except for a dummy) Shenzhou capsule is whizzing over your head. It was launched around 1400 UTC on one of China's newer Long March II F boosters. There's an article at CNN. As per usual, our good friends at NORAD have all the details of its orbit available here, but after last September you need to register to get it..."

Comments

Re:China's had spaceflight since the 1970s

[Anonymous Coward]

of course they have their sights set on being no. 1. They think that Han chinese are the culmination of evolution and that everything outside the middle kingdom is the wasteland of barbarians. I've spoken with Chinese (in China) who sheepishly told me that Chinese were superior human beings. They already think they're number 1, but i'm sure they want to assume their proper place as soon as possible.

It means we better get going on SDI.

[glrotate]

Because Bill Clinton gave Loral (large campaign donner) Washington Post Story permission to sell this technology to our good friends the Chinese, they'll soon be able to deliver highly enriched Uranium right to your doorstep! The Democrats and Europeans think that playing defense is unsportsmanlike and that a shield is unnecessary. Thankfully Bush,Rumsfeld et al think differently and were are moving ahead on the project.

Shenzhou = Holy Vessel

[grainofsand]

For what it is worth, Shenzhou translates as Holy Vessel or Holy Ship.

rumor from the old days

[alizard]

I'm not entirely certain that the passenger is a dummy. There was a rumor floating around some years back that the first Russian missions allegedly "manned" by dummies actually were flying corpses, i.e. the life support systems didn't work as advertised.

Perhaps the Chinese had the same problem and decided to spin the PR the same way.

However, I hope this is not true and look forward to welcoming China to the "Man in Space" club.

Of course, it would be nice to know that NASA is responding with the nanotube-based space elevator project or an orbital-speed railgun to allow undercutting China's prices by a factor of a few hundred and their own current pricing by a factor of a few thousand.

Believe it when I see it.....

[Brian_Ellenberger]

Note: all facts taken from CIA factbook http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index .html

Haven't we heard this before time and time again. The Japanese, the Germans, the EU, the Russians, etc, etc, etc. I remember back in the 80s when Japan was "taking over the world" and Americans were just lazy stupid people who would all soon be working for Japanese bosses. Hasn't turned out that way, eh?

First of all, remember that past economic growth is no indication of future growth. See dot com boom. Don't make the same mistake with other country's economies (or this one's). Secondly, every country has its own difficulties. China has serious internal stability problems to deal with (see Tienanmen Square). It still has a very large percentage of agriculture based workers, around 50%. The per capita GDP is only $3,600 (compared to $36,200 for US). Remember that with x4 the population of the US you have to spend x4 the resources feeding and clothing them. Finally, while they have over a billion people now it will be interesting to see what long term effects the "one-child" policy will have---especially if the vast majority of Chinese choose to have males.

Of course, they still may come up and kick our butts. But don't think it will be simple.

Brian Ellenberger