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China Plans Manned Space Flight October 15
epmos writes "As previously reported on /., China is working toward launching a manned space flight Real Soon Now(tm). Many news sites have
stories suggesting it could be as soon as a week away. The flight is expected to last about 90 minutes and complete one orbit." According to some of these stories, though, there's speculation about the flight lasting up to 24 hours.
I'll pretend you're being half serious.
Eating with chopsticks in space would be easier than eating with a knife or fork. For using either of those, you must apply pressure against a back surface. You won't be able to stab a steak in the air (not that they get steak) as it would go flying into a research colony of ants and spread havok (I for one welcome yadda yadda yadda). Same thing with knives. With spoons, you're relying on gravity to hold whatever you picked up on the spoon.
With chopsticks, however, you provide pressure to two sides of a food particle. While making a mistake might be more spectacular (fling), they are less likely to happen.
Sticky rice, anyone?
I hope everything goes successfully for the Chinese, and I hope that this is only the beginning for a long Chinese manned space program.
Additionally, let this serve as a wake-up call to us, that manned space exploration is a common goal and desire that we all share.
In other news, people of China have discovered the VCR, the internet, and thicker toilet paper infused with aloe-vera ...
And why is that? Developing space technology can only be a good thing.
If the US and Russia are too lazy to get off their collective asses and meet the challenge, it's their fault - not China's, India's or other more innovative countries fault.
BOO! TERRO
s/USA/China/ and ask yourself the same question.
Calm down, it was only a joke.
I do find most Americans abroad are quite loud and obnoxious, but on the times I have visited your country I've only experienced courtesy and service of the highest order.
The honest truth.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
I bet some people were saying similar things about the Japanese car-industry - which eventually went out to beat the crap out of the original US car manufacturers.
BOO! TERRO
Without that country sending goods to stock the shelves, your local Wal-Mart would look like Who-ville after the Grinch got done with it. If you're one of the 99% of Americans who send a good chunk of your cash to China every time you go shopping, you hardly have any business complaining about what they decide to spend your money on after you've just willingly given it to them.
How about creating an entire space program that can put a person into orbit for less than the US spends on maintaining the Shuttle for one year. There space program is only costing something like 3 billion dollars.
They didn't develop their own space program, they bought some old russian parts.
World War II. German scientists. USA.
it's in my head
Um, OK, so that puts China about 40 years behind the West space-tech-wise and about 350 years behind Human Rights-wise. As for 'Fashion-wise,' well let's just say there's nothing going on that a two-episode Queer-Eye makeover and a small series of violent revolutions couldn't fix...
I think it is simple - due to Earth rotation if you do not come down at the end of the first orbit the following ones will take you further and further from the main China where I presume all their search and rescue facilities are. In 24 hours you will be back over China again. So one-orbit plan and 24 hours (17 orbits?) backup plan seem logical.
And why is that? Developing space technology can only be a good thing.
Oh please. That's untrue. I can think of a number of ways that developing space technology can be bad -- lauching a man into orbit is essentially declaring that you have intercontinental ballistic missile technology (to some extent launching anything into orbit is, but putting a man up there means that you can carry a much larger payload and do so with high reliability -- both big points). You could also develop "space technology" toward the point of mass launchers which have the destruction potential of nuclear weapons with less radiation and other issues.
Is this the purpose behind China launching a man into orbit? I seriously doubt it. But blanket statements like that are silly. It's like saying that nuclear power is only a bad thing -- it's not the technology that is good or bad, it's the application there of. And pretty much any technology can be used for either.
If the US and Russia are too lazy to get off their collective asses and meet the challenge
Russia is a bit more concerned with how to feed itself and pay its people than with the space program. The US has other interests at the moment. Manned space programs are largely viewed as a black hole for public spending -- because while they do return benefits in the form of new technologies, they do so irregularly and with highly indirect benefits. It's unlikely that the manned space program will ever repay itself directly.
I'd like to see the human race off this single mudball as well, but inane sophistry like that doesn't help things.
The United State's space program is a flabby, stagnant beauracracy. It needs an enema at the top, an exercise program in the middle, and some moral support in the rank and file. Most of all, it needs to take a long, hard look at boron/proton fusion, and get busy designing ships that can use it for swift interplanetary travel.
The fact that both China and India have space programs is beautiful to me. Remember who was first in space? Not John Glenn, but Yuri Gagarin. Perhaps NASA will recover from its existing case of cranial rectitis (hint: leaves a brown ring around your neck) when faced with a large, motivated competitor with a growing economy.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
One of the major flaws, perhaps, with the US democratic system is that it is predicated on a 4 year cycle of election and re-election. This tends to make planning for long-term projects politically disadvantageous to the White House incumbent who ideally wants to see "returns" during his period in office. It is not often that grand projects such as the Interstate system or the Apollo program are enacted.
China is very different. There is a single monolithic party in power. Also do not forget that this a people who have a collective ethno-genetic memory spanning thousands of years who have historically proven willing and able to plan decades and centuries ahead.
Couple the above with the fact that all 9 members of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party politburo are engineers by training and you realize that the forthcoming manned flight is not a flash-in-the-pan but part of a broader strategic decision to achieve preeminence in space.
This is part of a collective Long March by which China aims to overtake the USA in almost every field of human endeavour. This will perhaps take 50 to a 100 years - a sizeable period to the American world-view but much less so to the Chinese mindset. Given the extraordinary progress China has already made since the 1970s we would be fools to doubt their ability to go the rest of the way.
Actually, I believe that a citizen's rights as a citizen are revoked when they are declared an 'enemy combatant'. IIRC, this can be done 'at a whim', without any trial or judge's oversight.
The 21st century called: They also want the 60's space program back...
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I bet you boycot all chinese imports as well. Oh you don't yeah I know talk is cheap, actually trying to find something still produced in the west not.
Either do something about it or shut the fuckup.
Personally I can see china for what it is, a messy dictatorship that is now doing what the rest of the world was doing a couple of decades ago. Or in the case of the US is still doing on some points. Tell me american, when exactly was the ban on mixed race marriages really lifted in all states? When was the last racial murder? When was the last person incarcerated without due process?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sorry to tell you this, but China already has ICBMs. Had them for decades. In fact, China recently has been selling payload space on Longmarches.
It's not their rocket program that's behind, it's their manned program.
Ninety minutes is the minimum flight time, since China has no water recovery fleet and the vehicle isn't design for splash down. Assuming they want it to land back in China, it has to go at least once around.
That may be all they're planning on. With more than a couple of orbits the ground track will be such that they can't land in China until the Earth and orbit track synch up again. I haven't looked at the likely orbital inclination to figure it out, but that could well be nearly 24 hours (16 or 17 orbits) after launch.
Presumably if all goes well during the first orbit, and they have the consumables (power, O2, etc) aboard, they could go for further orbits, but they may plan on taking it cautiously.
-- Alastair
I can go you one better: my Dad worked for NASA during the Apollo program, and for Martin Marietta (as it was then) during Viking and the early stages of the Shuttle. I grew up surrounded by space program memorabilia, and I've always been bitter that we never lived up to the promise of those years. This is damned exciting, and I don't see why you don't see it. Maybe because you grew up in the 60's you're a bitter, jaded old fart who can't get excited about anything any more?
And you know, Zep and Floyd are still good music. Why the hell shouldn't the 14-year-olds enjoy it, if they want to? God, I hate patronizing ageism
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Actually, this is a very bad misconception. To governments, life is a propoganda tool, that is used to massage the 'will' of the masses. Reference recent history.
The loss of 7 lives in a re-entry accident is used by the government to achieve a huge (and very subtle) shift if expenditures. This is being used very effectively behind the scenes to promote the concept of scrapping the shuttle program, in the meantime, no launches, so, no money being spent on launches.
The daily loss of life overseas is being promoted as 'the cost' and a 'justifiable cost' of enforcing a foreign policy on a region that wants no part of it.
It's all how you spin it, and how the press regurgitates the spin. If you can make the masses believe that losing 7 astronauts is 'to much', then you can gain political support for an objective that doesn't include a shuttle program. If you can make the masses believe hundreds of lives are 'worth the price' to support an overseas invasion, then you can gain support for huge expenditures on that program.
Body count is just a propoganda tool, to be used when convenient, and to be swept under the rug when inconvenient. That applies to ALL governments, including the american government.
Before we have an uncontrolled explosion of crap, much like the internet, we need to declare a World Department of Space Exploration that is in charge of scheduling launches, arrivals, and trajectories. If we don't establish a system of space management, we could in fact be increasing our odds of having more debris scattered across our states. Anyone remember the mess and legal problems with the Discovery shuttle explosion? The last thing I need is a hunk of the cockpit landing on my hood as I drive down the highway on my way to pickup my grandmother from the airport.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
You mean, sort of how like the Bush Administration leaked the identity of a covert CIA agent when her husband revealed a coverup about the war in Iraq??
-- I hereby announce, on behalf of my great ancester Oog, a retroactive patent on THE WHEEL.