China Sends First Taikonaut To Space

tuxlove writes "Space.com reports that China has just successfully launched its first manned space mission. "Blasting off from a remote space base in the Gobi Desert atop a Long March 2F rocket, a single Chinese astronaut named Yang Liwei is on his way to circle the planet every 90 minutes aboard the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft. As a result, China has become only the third nation on Earth capable of independently launching its citizens into orbit. " Perhaps this will kick the US space program back into gear?" aerojad points to this Reuters report, about which he says "The article is short on details, aside from 'Xinhua said the craft carried astronaut Yang Liwei, 38. The launch on Wednesday, 42 years after the Soviet Union put the first man into space, marked a milestone for China's secretive space programme, which analysts say has its sights set on a manned mission to the moon.' The mission is due to end in 21 hours." zxm adds a link to China Daily's coverage, and puiwah to a story on MSNBC.

Comments

Not "Taikonaut", the term is "Yuhangyuan"

[RocketJeff]

Taikonaut was the term coined by an American (IIRC) observer of the Chinese program. The Chinese use "Yuhangyuan" which is closer to a proper translation of astronaut.

Taikonaut was formed by taking the Chinese Chinese word for 'Space' and adding the '-onaut' ending.

Re:The tricky part

[Flamerule]

Not for China... they seem to have a relatively low regard for life (compared to the U.S. and other space-faring nations) [...]

Yeah.

so I'd bet getting them up is/was more important than getting them back.

Nope. For the Chinese, a large part of the value in this space launch is its propaganda value. In that light, having their first man in space die on his way back would be disastrous. It would make them look incompetent, compared to the USSR's and the US' first manned launches.

Re:NASA's Offical Reply

[CommandNotFound]

Odd. I was never taught anything in school about China's exploration. In fact, I remember learning that while Europe was going power-crazy and grasping for more land, China minded its own business...

Me too, until I read Landes' _The Wealth and Poverty Of Nations_, which is a fascinating economic view of history of the past thousand years. The Chinese pretty much had the Europeans beaten in shipbuilding:

"[...] The biggest were about 400 feet long, 160 feet wide (compare the 85 feet of Columbus's Santa Maria), had nine staggered masts and twelve square sails of red silk."
"[...] The first of these fleets, that of the eunuch admiiral Zheng He (Cheng-ho) in 1405, consisted of 317 vessels and carried 28,000 men. [...] In this way, over a period of three years [1404-1407], the Chinese built or refitted some 1,681 ships. Medieval Europe could not have conceived of such an armada."

After this, they pulled inward, but I never learned about the previous achievements until adulthood.

Re:Outside Verification?

[bani]

water vapor is invisible until it condenses. and at ground level it takes an awful lot of water vapor to be visible. and it isnt generally visible for very long at ground level. thats why when you boil water, its visible for maybe a second or two, then disappates.

well ask yourself why you're breathing out WATER VAPOR, but its not making huge clouds every time you breathe? because it ain't condensing, bucko.

it'll condense in winter, but the air is very cold then.

tah dah. basic gradeschool physics.

your tinfoil hat needs adjusting, as well as your basic education.

Response to Russian technology claims

[theolein]

There have been many posts here about the Chinese basing their capsule design on the Russian Soyuz design from the 60's and how this supposedly makes the Chinese effort worthless. Think about this.

The whole entire complete US space programme was based on German technology and ideas from WWII taken from Germany and transplanted into the US along with the German rocket team people under Werner von Braun. Even the idea of a space plane was based on a German WWII idea called the "Saenger Amerikabomber" which was an idea to develop a manned spcae plane that would be able to reach the continental United States and drop a bomb before completing one sub orbit by skippping off the atmosphere and then returning to Germany.

Visible in a few minutes

[jmichaelg]

At 5:58 EDT, Shenzhou 5 will be visible over Boston
At 11:28 GMT, it'll be visible over Chicago.
Last chance at 5:59 PDT to see it over the West Coast.

Orbit details at space weather.