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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.
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
I personally think this is the best news to happen to space exploration for ages; it might just scare enough people in the US/EU to kick a little more funding towards NASA/ESA.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Done in the '60s or no, manned spaceflight is Very Hard and Very Expensive. Up till now, the manned spaceflight club only had two real members the USA and USSR/Russia. Anybody else pulling this off is news. It's especially news these days since the Russians can't afford to do the things they accomplished in their heyday and the US is infatuated with shuttles and mostly just plays in low Earth orbit.
Manned spaceflight has needed aggressive new blood for some time now. If China starts accomplishing "Great Things", then it just might motivate the US a little.
the first thing that occured to me when I saw this headline was "so f--ing what?". I am certainly not saying that the exploration of space and the science/efforts behind attempting to achieve it aren't anything short of fascinating, but that fact that China's doing something that was done over 30 years ago? Big deal. Or maybe I'm missing the significance? It wouldn't be the first time and I'm sure if I am, there will be no shortage of ./'ers to tell me so.
Well, during the cold war the space program was really a demonstration of capability. If a state has the capabiltiy to put a person in orbit then it is inferred that they also have the capability to hit any country in the world with a missle carrying a good sized payload. This coupled with nuclear capability is a not-so-subtle "don't fuck with us" statement.
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.
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
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.
There are at least two answers to this question.
Considering the mess at NASA (see the Columbia report), putting money into NASA looks a bit problematic. But what if we manage to reform NASA and the existing aerospace industry? Spending money on them then seems like it could lead to real benefits. We should also consider that, while NASA has truly major problems, it still does manage to get some real work of real value done.
We could also pour the money into alternatives to the existing NASA/contractor work. That might also lead to major benefits.
We must also consider the level of spending that NASA receives. It's $15B. The United States spends approximately 100 times that annually on health care. We also spend about 25 times NASA's budget on K-12 education. Neither health care nor education is above criticism. If we did cancel NASA and put the money into either education or health care, we might not get any really worthwhile return on the money.
Summing up, while NASA has huge problems and needs reform, the amount we're spending on them is downright trivial.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
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.
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.
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.
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.