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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.
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
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, 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.