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China Plans Manned Space Flight October 15

Posted by timothy on from the autonomous-province dept.

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.

7 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. This is exactly what the world needs by Eric+Ass+Raymond · · Score: 0, Interesting
    Excellent.

    Maybe we can get the space race started again.

    --
    BOO! TERRO
    1. Re:This is exactly what the world needs by sl0ppy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      unfortunately, the US and Russia probably won't be part of this space race, which may leave us behind the times.

      instead, we'll have China, India, and a few other countries making leaps and bounds, possibly passing both the US and Russia before either country figures out to re-join the space race.

      i don't think this is necessarily a "good thing".

  2. Re:knowing china by hattig · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The benefit that China has is that it can afford to lose a few taikonauts to accidents, etc, all in the name of exploration and to benefit the country as a whole.

    The western world has no guts and won't try and take a risk any more.

    Expect China to become the number one space faring race within 20 years.

  3. Re:I've been wrong before, but ... by iabervon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's not like spaceflight is easy yet. Of the two programs that have succeeded so far, one of them is currently not doing it.

    Furthermore, it seems like China is interested in further exploration. Until they had ambitions beyond where the US and Russia were going regularly, it didn't make sense to go to space themselves. Now they're interested in going to Mars, but they obviously have to start by getting themselves to orbit. Sure, it was done 30 years ago, but they're actually interested in doing the next step that the US and Russia didn't try at the time.

  4. Re:I've been wrong before, but ... by Bazman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Two members? One of which isn't currently flying manned spaceflights because of the last STS incident and one that probably cant afford it anymore.

    Anyone know where I can start learning Chinese?

  5. Re:I've been wrong before, but ... by master_p · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would like to note here that "man in space" should be differentiated by "man in orbit". To put a man in orbit is relatively easy (relative to what humans can achieve, that is), but to put a man in space (i.e., to live in space for a big amount of time, move from planet to planet and from star to star etc) is nearly impossible (due to lack of artificial gravity and good propulsion systems, mainly).

    I would feel really proud for the human race when we go to space...putting a man in orbit, even going to the moon, does not mean much to me. If you compare space with sea, the analogy of putting a man in orbit is getting your feet wet at the seaside...that's hardly an accompishment. We are still so primitive...

  6. Re:Low gravity eating? by nolocke · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ed Lu, the current ISS science officer has this to say in his blog (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp7/lul etters/lu_letter3.html) about eating in space:

    "As for utensils, the only utensil we use is a spoon. Don Pettit had a pair of chopsticks up here, but I haven't found where he stashed them yet, so I can use them! It turns out there is no need for a fork or a knife. All of the food that requires a utensil to eat has some sort of sauce or at least some moisture to it, so it naturally sticks to the spoon. This is the same effect on the ground that allows drops of water to stick to windows, here it allows us to eat without having our food fly all over the place. This force isn't very strong, so you have to move fairly slowly when eating, or the food will literally fly right off your spoon (and onto the wall). "

    Funny that NASA engineered their food specifically to work with spoons. But they have managed to semi-solve the problem of food in micro-gravity flying off of spoons.