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?"

Comments

if there is not a race to mars

[the_2nd_coming]

then I don't know what else could get NASA moving again.

Re:This is great news...

[TopShelf]

problem is, they'll be hungry again about an hour after they've eaten...

Race may not be a good thing

[addie]

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!

Re:Race may not be a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically YOU wouldn't exist if all the cells in your body didn't cooperate with each other. The real evolutionary steps came when there was cooperation: single cells forming multicellular organisms, animals forming groups, people forming tribes, etc. Competition only holds the status quo; it keeps things in a kind of entropy until the next big step forward.

Alone I can build a house. We together can build a city.

Furthermore, do you know what we call something that is so over compeditive that it cannot do anything BUT compete with everything?

Cancer.

Re:let's get ready to rumble!

[el-spectre]

There's a slight difference between a 100 foot flight in a light aircraft, and launching a 7 million pound rocket, I think.

I am still amazed that we went from 'can't fly' to 'can land on other astronomical bodies' in less than a lifetime.

Re:let's get ready to rumble!

[osu-neko]

...and it should of course be noted that dogs made it into space before humans.