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Chinese Manned Space Flight Set For Autumn
brandido writes "According to an article at Space.com, "Chinese space officials remain on schedule for the first piloted flight of that nation's Shenzhou spacecraft. Chief designers and mission directors say Shenzhou 5 will be launched in autumn, reported the People's Daily last week." Between this, the X-Prize, and multiple launches of Mars probes in the last few weeks, it looks like the space race may be heating back up?"
it's like my dad always said, "a little competition never hurt anyone."
look at the last time the US had a space race, we achieved what many call the greatest achievement of mankind, we landed on the moon.
Mike
and to think ... they all have accomplished so much even without the support of N*SYNC. Amazing.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
...because the astronauts on the space station have been hungry for delivery for weeks.
then I don't know what else could get NASA moving again.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Hopefully the Chinese pushing forward with developing their own space program might give NASA, ESA, and Multi-national Corporations the kick in the ass they need.
:-|
can't wait to be able to say "We live in a world where a Chinaman has walked on the Moon." can you?
Belief that Perspectives matter more than Facts = Mark of the Truly Ignorant
Yes, it definitely is. Only this time, it's the Capitalists vs. the Communists. Oh wait . . .
Although the manned space program has been ridiculously successful in terms of preventing accidents, there have been 3 instances where small decisions have led to fatal mishaps. The Apollo launchpad fire, the Challenger, and of course Columbia. The more times we attempt these types of activities, the more accidents we will have. That said...
I'm a space junkie, I love reading about anything exploration related. But national pride is not a good excuse for spending billions to go into space. Should we be celebrating the Chinese, or asking them why they aren't instead working on a way to contribute to the ISS program? Europe is heading for Mars news story, and the US has already been there. How many different times do we need to accomplish the same goal under different flags?
I applaud the Chinese for getting a man into space, this is by no means an easy task. But we have to look at priorities. I'd love to live in a world where competition wasn't the driving reason to succeed!
I wish them the best of luck.
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Gutenberg was a wuss who would have frozen to death if it hadn't been for the inventions of Ogg, Bringer of Flame.
Consider: Space Shuttle: concieved around 70's, built 80's Soyuz: 60's, minor upgrades, still based on old model. Shendzou: 90's, 00's? Granted, it seems to be based on the soyuz, but Chinese say they built it themselves, and this seems to be the case: it's considerably bigger, more modern electronics et.c. Who would ever have thought that the Chinese would be flying the most up to date spacethingy, it seems absurd, but it's a fact. How the world has changed since the 80's...
The reason why Americans suck at space is cause you are too busy being a racist worldwide, you just don't have time for science.
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Nice generalization. A few points:
"putting a Chinese man somewhere above the trophosphere"
A hate to break it to the undisclosed Chinese official, but a Chinese man has already been above the troposphere. We sent him up in the Space Shuttle. He is my former boss, and all around great guy Taylor Wang. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/wang-t.html
He is now a prof. at Vanderbilt University, where I worked for his dept. as a student worker for several years.
Once manned heavier-than-air flight was demonstrated, going to the moon was pretty inevitable
Um, no.
Flight through the atmosphere with heavy craft and launching something into space are almost completely unrelated problems.
For the first, you need to figure out how airfoils work to produce lift (helicopter blades count in this category), and figure out how to move the air that surrounds your craft to produce thrust. Then there's materials engineering to get the performance to weight ratio nice enough.
For the second, you have to figure out celestial mechanics, and you have to figure out how to build reaction drives that _don't_ use the surrounding medium to move (as you won't have air around you for much of your trip, and it's more of a hindrance than a help at significant speed). Then you have the herculean task of materials engineering and clever craft design required to get an impulse-to-weight ratio large enough to escape the gravity well (or at least have enough delta-v for orbit). If the gravity well was even a little deeper, we wouldn't have been able to do it with chemical rockets at all (though aircraft would still be easy to build).
There's a world of difference between a jet engine and a rocket engine. There's a world of difference between something light and strong enough to glide and something light and strong enough to have a 40:1 wet:dry weight and make orbit. It's not a difference of scale - it's a difference of fundamental type of device.
In summary, please do more research about exactly what's involved in each task before proclaiming that one follows from the other. What actually precipitated _both_ was the industrial revolution, which gave a drastic increase in technology and in materials science.
Don't forget Soyuz was never just intended for one purpose (like Apollo), it is a family of spacecraft that can be configured to several purposes - including, had the Soviets been able to tame their N1 booster, fly around and orbit the Moon.
In many respects Soyuz was far superior to the Apollo capsule, so it makes a great start for a country with limited resources to get into the manned space program.
Best wishes,
Mike.