Slashdot Mirror
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.
"China Sends First Takeout To Space"
It's good to see one more nation in the space. Go China!
"I shall explain this by waving my hands about in an appropriate manner." -- Cambridge University Math Dept.
Welcome to the Space Race!
China has become only the third nation on Earth capable of independently launching its citizens into orbit.
That's nice and all, but isn't the tricky part bringing them back?
Let's see what happens in 21 hours.
In the end a Patriot missile took out the Chinese ICBMs.
I think Morgan Freeman and Jack Palance were in it.
It's about damned time!
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Hopefully this will cause NASA and the US gov't to focus more on the need for ongoing space exploration.
Has anyone gotten a chance to hear about the equipment they're using? It's mostly russian Soyez hardware isn't it? More information in this department would be interesting, I know NASA based rocket design off of ICBM's in the early program, did china go the same way?
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
I just want to say congratulations to the China space programme. As a mechanical engineering student, I can appreciate the work it takes to successfuly complete so complicated a feat. I hope this jump-starts not only the US space programme, but space programmes around the world.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okDoes anyone know how to say, "Capricorn One", in Chinese?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's interesting how China kept secret the time and day of the launch. Kind of sad how communism works like that. For such a mark in history, I'm sure the world would have liked to see the launch live on TV, and known about it in advance so they could plan their evenings accordingly.
As everyone else is saying, congrats to China. Too bad they have to be so undercover about it.
and I'm sure everybody else wants it too. NORAD has nothing, NASA has nothing, space.com has nothing, and I can't read Chinese.
Like it needs to be said, but if anybody stumbles across that information, totally post it.
Given the comments I've heard recently here on slashdot, I think I speak for many of us when I say GO CHINA!
Sincerest congratulations to the Chinese. I hope everyone here realizes what a momentous occaision in history has just occured - This may well be remembered as the beginning of the second space race.
What happens if they burn up on re-entry?
*Sombre Offical Types*
"He was a hero of the (insert equivalent of Hero Of The Soviet Union here)"
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Is anyone actually verifying this? Or are we just trusting the Chineese government that they have a man in space. I mean, is someone from a non-government controlled media outlet going to watch this guy land and climb out of the capsule?
Seriously, if you think the Apollo moon landing conspiracies are bad...
Another view, expressed before the launch, comes from The Times of India, which in an editorial Monday called the Shenzhou 5 launch a "joke." "It would be better to call it China's Late Creep Forward, given that Beijing is attempting to showcase a four-decade-old technology. If this is China's idea of arriving, then it's come at a time when the other two spacefaring nations have left it light years behind," the publication said.
Can you say greenThe war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
While this is no small achievement, does it *really* matter? The space race ended some time ago...
No doubt their are factions within the Chinese government who really want the propaganda coup, but is there any more to this than just some positive press?
Good for them and all, and I hope their astronaut gets back in one piece. Yet I have to wonder if it's all worth it. I suspect that there are more important things that their goverment could spend money on. Parts of China are quite backwards, and surely the money could be better spent on solving immediate social and ecological problems there.
In all fairness though, governments in many different nations have their spending priorities all messed up.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005B4B 6-1CEC-1F5D-905980A84189EEDF&catID=2
They covered it quite extensively in the latest issue.
Life is irony, and nothing ever goes as planned.
NASA's offical response:
What their real response (measure in actions, not press-relases) remains to be seen, of course.
actually, yes, I believe that was the reason given. They probably didn't want some challenger-esque footage following their future attempts.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Of interest, I believe this is the first time since 1969 that a single person has traveled alone in space. Every US flight since Mercury has had at least 2 people, the last 1 person flight was when the Soyuz was being validated.
Sadly, Komarov (the pilot of Soyuz 1) died when his spacecraft impacted the ground. I hope this brave Chinese pilot will have better luck.
TAIKONAUTS GO!
This is exactly the boost that NASA needs to get started again. Hopefully they will be able to shed all of their bureaucracy and do some real engineering. BTW I hope that that China's rocket doesn't fail because it is built with stolen US designs.
So how do you propose that they sart their space program? Should they have just started with a manned mission to Mars?
I don't think its very practical to suggest that just because a couple of countries have already done it, that anyone who now wishes to start a space program of their own are obliged to break new ground on their very first manned mission.
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Now to hope that they got everything right for a safe return. Not much chance of making repairs if they didn't.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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.
They're both tricky. America's had accidents in both phases. In fact, the "staying alive whilst up there" part is pretty tough too - remember Apollo 13?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I don't get that....I mean, the US did what China is doing 40+ years ago....what, do we need to spend billions and billions more just for the sake of national pride, to show how far ahead of another country we are? Seems a bad reason to me.
(btw, congratulations China!)
If the announcement has been made, it has been successful. Time to pop the champaign and give a solid salute on a major accomplishment.
For those in the United States, ABC News television program NightLine is doing a special 1 hour program on the subject. There are web links to the story on that page as well. This should be an interesting program to watch, and seeing it on television does bring some reality to the whole thing rather than reading about it on Slashdot. It is also nice to see the mainstream press talk about this stuff as well.
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Ok, I'm being serious (not a troll). I would have thought that other countries would have been sending manned missions to space back in the 80s or 90s at least. I guess other countries just aren't interested?
There's an article by James Oberg, space expert, on the spacecraft hardware design decisions the Chinese have made. To sum it up -- they are indeed very serious about being in this game for the long haul (or Long March, whatever).
They took their sweet time for a very good reason, and have every intention of leapfrogging past the mistakes of the US and Russians. Slow and steady wins the race.
And China doing it - this is just a poor starving commie dictatorship trying to make everyone forget it's nothing more than a poor, starving commie dictatorship. Sort of like the ghetto kids wearing $200 sneakers.
I congratulate the Chinese on their achievement, it is truly awesome for them to put a man in orbit. However I have to wonder about how the world, especially the US, will react in the long-term to an accelerating Chinese space program. Mayalsia has announced that it wants to send a cosmonaut up to the ISS, India has hinted that it wants a manned space program, Japan has a shuttle in the works, and the European Space Agency has yet to even plan for manned space travel after the Hermes shuttle failed to materialize.
Overall this may be the spark of a new space race. No one wants to see their neighbors achieve a presence in space that they cannot reach, thus we open the door for half-a-dozen groups to begin sending men into space for political and scientific purposes. China has already announced that they intend to build their own station in orbit to compete with the ISS, and old USSR/Russian technology/training is for sale to whoever can afford it (India, ESA, USA, etc.). If manned spacefaring technology is truly the passport to being a first-rate power of the 21st century, we will see almost every nation with ballistic missile technology attempting at least some sort of manned spaceflight capacity.
Thus a new space race may prove detrimental since most of the technology is dual-use. No doubt, it would be uber-cool to have observatories on the backside of the moon and a space station comparable to those seen only in sci-fi platforms thus far. Microwave solar power systems like those under development at the University of Kyoto could solve most of the world's power problems. Yet these also become quite potent orbital weapons capable of incinerating missile silos, labs, and cities is "accidentally misalinged". Space rockets were ballistic missiles, and the whole of composite materials, microcomputers, velcro, and hosts od other civilican and military discoveries trace their way back to the Space Race of the 1960s.
At worst we might be seeing the beginnings of a new arms race. Hopefully the initiative by China will evolve into an independent space station that goads India, Japan, the ESA, and USA to seriously pump funding back into their own programs and develop the spacefaring technology of 2001 by 2051. Maybe whoever said, "the 1960s were a decade transplanted from the 21st century because of the space race" will be proven right after all. If the US does not get off its duff soon, we may see a Chinese camera on the moon looking at two taikonauts wondering whether to take down the American flag still found at the Sea of Tranquility before we know it.
Anyone else have any thoughts/comments?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
One wonders why it took them so long.
One wonders even more why Western European nations like Great Britain were beaten by the Chinese.
One wonders why the Russians even beat us to the punch in the first place, when we supposedly got the better German rocket-engineers from WWII.
///
Good Fig - News for Christians.
http://www.goodfig.org
I suppose the Chinese government installed filters on the windows of the spacecraft so that the astronaut (or whatever the Chinese translation) doesn't get a full view of the corrupt western world.
They used a (modified) Russian vehicle, and the astronauts were trained by Russia. About the only thing the Chinese did was provide the launchpad.
Oh aren't we the ever positive one. Damn those Chinese for not leaping straight into warp travel. How dare they not land a man on mars and immediately start building massive colonies.
Sheesh, every journey begins with a single step, and this is it.
As for the oppression, famine and poverty, the money spent on a space programme is a fraction of that spent on military hardware. If you want to fund good works, sell a couple of b-2s.
I mean if American parts and Russian parts are all made in Taiwan, where are Chinese parts made?
P.S. It's a movie reference for those of you who don't get it.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
tuxlove writes:
Maybe. While the shuttles are likely down for yet another year, coincidentally enough the House Science committee is meeting this Thursday to discuss The Future of Human Spaceflight. And, apparently at the request of the White House, the National Space Society has just realized a short position paper on next steps for human space exploration. NSS recommends a general revitalization beyond NASA, a focus on lowering the cost to get into space, planning beyond the space station for a base on the moon, and funding "planetary defense" against asteroids and comets.
Energy: time to change the picture.
...I'm sort of depressed. It's 10:30 now and CNN still hasn't gotten its act together. Neither has NBC or Fox. I walked around the halls of my dorm and they were noticibly inactive. Everyone is watching the Cubs game.
A rocket? Capsule? Training? What a waste of money.
Think about it. According to the CIA Factbook China has about 1,286,975,468 people. Figure the average person is 5' tall and you've got 1,218,726 miles worth of people. The moon at apogee is about 251,655 miles away, so they've got enough people to build a ladder to the moon with a nice stable base, even figuring in the inevitable attrition. Hell, take a look at the prototype. Just start passing up building supplies and poof! Instant colony!
Oh crap! With all the frozen dog jokes that are sure to show up, slashdot is certain to be blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Good-bye slashdot, hello The People's China News.
Few people realize this, but NASA's 45th Anniversary was just 14 days ago (Oct. 1st). While you are right that the US and the Russians achieved the same feat decades ago, look where they are right now. NASA is stagnating, having made no progress since the shuttle was deployed and merely continuing a program of attrition where their few resources are slowly being destroyed in one accident after another. The Russian program, while still somewhat effective, is severely strapped for cash and is still relying on the technology they developed in the 60s.
I for one applaud China for taking the initiative in the field of aerospace at a time when the rest of the world is facing inward, worrying about their stagnating economy or a petty squabble in the middle east*. Hopefully they will progress further succesfully and rapidly - we haven't had nearly enough development in aviation since the X-15 project was scrapped.
* I mean no disrespect to the Isreali nor Palestinian dead by this. Current events in that region are tragic, I merely wish that as humans we could rise above it and focus ourselves on more lofty goals as the Chinese have...
This comes at a time when private American companies are gearing up their attempts at creating viable and cheap methods at putting men in space.
Sure, it isn't orbit, but how far off could orbit be if Armadillo Aero and Rutan are successful at the stage they are at now?
I know that it is a huge leap from going to where the X Prize competitors are going and orbit, but the point that I am trying to underline is that fact that we have privately funded companies making what looks to be viable attempts (except for the Rocket Guy hehe)at getting into space.
I would be excited about this if they were using all home grown hardware, but as it stands it's just a remake of former U.S.S.R. accomplishments.
This is no trivial feat to be sure, but it would have meant a lot more if they had done it say, 20 years ago using their own hardware and launch infrastructure.
So, congratulations Russia on being the first country to put another country into space!
In fact, yes... I think it was.
It's sort of interesting... I do envision a new space race for prestige out of this. But it won't involve the US and Russia... it'll be between India, China and possibly a SE Asia alliance.
I may be in the minority but I consider this bad news.
0 618.stm
Up until now the only countries with serious 'access' to space have been the US and Russia and, for all their faults, I don't fear those countries. In some ways I trust them, and in other ways I trust them to fear the other and the rest of the world. Either way, I think they'll behave themselves.
China? I'm not so sure.
This is just my opinion, of course, and I won't even attempt to back it up with any hard evidence because I know next-to-nothing on the subject. I'm simply talking as a citizen of the Earth who has a right to be concerned for the future of the planet and the species.
What I will say, though, is this...
Do you believe that China's interest in space is purely civilian?
Well last week, a spokesman for the Chinese government was quoted as saying: "China has never and will never participate in an arms race of any form in outer space."
Most people would assume that China intends to compete for military control of space, or at least to have a strong military presence. Most people would have accepted that. But if the Chinese government is already lying about its plans for space then I find that to be most worrying.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/318
I hate the term "taikonaut". You know what? Without proper pronunciation (as most westerners do), taiko can mean leper. (And thus becomes a pun). Better use "yuhangyuan" instead.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Great! As if little chicken bits from cosmonaut snacks hitting our shuttles in orbit wasn't enough! Now we'll have to clean lo mein off, too. ;P
;)
Welcome aboard China.
The report quoted a Chinese naval captain, Shen Zhongchang, as writing: "The mastery of outer space will be a requisite for military victory, with outer space becoming the new commanding heights for combat."
If the Chinese can provide a capsule that is as good as a Russian Capsule (plus other 'modern advances' mentioned at the end of the article) and do it at a reasonable cost, why shouldn't our Space Agency purchase these capsules from China? Designing and Building our own capsule would seem to be the natural thing for us to do, but in our capitalist econmony it might be cheaper to buy from China rather than putting all the time, effort, and money into recreating a piece of equipment that another Country has developed. Sure, the American companies that are vying for government contracts to provide our space agency with the capsule, but shouldn't we be putting funding elsewhere? Funding should go to researching and developing ways to get beyond the moon...to Mars and beyond even; not reinventing a way to get people into Earth Space.
If the Chinese can launch a manned space vehicle into orbit, this means that they can drop an ICMB into the middle of downtown LA or NYC.
What happens when and if in the future China's human rights record becomes so abysmal(not far from where it is now) that we revoke MFN trading status? Will they use this new tactical capability to "persuede" us to do more business with them?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Are nations eligible for the X prize?
Seems like they'd have the resources if nothing else (Goooooo Carmack!)
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Good on them. Maybe some competition will increase NASA funding.
Anyone know where to get some real time telemetry on Shenzhou? Is it passing overhead tonight?
As a result, China has become only the third nation on Earth capable of independently launching its citizens into orbit.
I, for one, hit low earth orbit just about every time I witness the latest criminally inept shenanigans coming out of the White House.
Wow, the dream of manned exploration moves one step closer to reality. China has everything to gain with its ambitious space plans and seems to be the only government serious about building a permanent moonbase.
This is cause for celebration. Its especially uplifting after the US has spent the last couple of years at war and the US's loss of its own spacefleet. Not to mention there are no ambitious projects anymore. Spacefaring has been distilled to the tight economics of launching commercial satellites and the scientific probes.
This is a great day for humanity and I hope all goes well for the Chinese space team.
I'm very much in awe. Is the technology old and the accoplishment something of the past? Sure. Is anyone else serious about spacefaring? No. China is quickly entering the 21st century through this, liberalizing its markets, and lately bowing down to protesters in Hong Kong. The future looks bright once again.
If this is a failed attempt at a dog-eating joke, I'm exterminating humanity from the face of the earth in hopes that our next gene pool might not be defective.
To all those who are a) jealous, b) pissed off, c) think they are a bunch of 60's wannabees
Have a look at what they are saying - they have a forward plan. For exploration and exploitation of space resources - LEO, space station, then the moon, then beyond. Long term yes. But so was Von Braun's plan - the Saturn V was designed to put big loads into LEO and then launch lunar/whatever missions from there. It is still a good plan.
Is this the first step - no. One of the articles (spaceref I think) says they cancelled their original manned space program in the 70's when they realized it was not going to work on their current boosters. And they have planning and building for years.
By 2020 the cheapest way to get to space may be aboard China Spacelines, unless someone builds a space elevator first.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
That's because they're making fun of you.
On an unrelated note, someone fix the /. servers.
The map of China on the chinese news article clearly shows Taiwan as being part of China (which it is not).
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
They are putting all their new nukes on solids. e.g. DF-31 For nukes you need cold-launch capability and a LOX/LH2 space rocket requires a couple of minutes to fill the tanks and for the engines to heat-up. They are no good for nukes. Too slow.
Ancient Chinese Secret huh?
Oh, right, I forgot about badly done Japanese accent "jokes". Sorry. Should've seen it coming.
I think I would have been prepared a little more in advance. I mean, what if some flunky forgot to include the last chapter -- "Re-entry and Landing" in the book?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That's the scary thing about atomic bombs. The only two atomic bombs ever actually used in war are basically 60 year old techology. Technology so old a modern EE might not even understand it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I hate to disagree with my fellow slashaddicts, but I see this as a terrible thing.
China, being an oppressive communist country is NOT doing this for the good of the chinese people, they're doing it for the military benefits.
While it's a nice technological achievement (spurred by secrets leaked during clinton's admin) It will not be prove to be something we'll like, we're talking China with Spy Satellites, GPS-like capabilities, and other military capabilities I am not allowed to talk of.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
http://www.cctv.com has a bunch of streams of the launch and pre-flight interviews. http://www.cctv-4.com has live feeds of the mission.
It was kind of sad that they didn't show it live, and it's probably the fear of a crash, but a lot of the "secrecy" surrounding the mission is a bunch of Western media hype. My mother-in-law, visiting from China, has been translating Chinese papers for me for the last week, giving me the name of the Astronaut days before the US papers, telling me the time of the launch 24 hours early, and several other things that our media says "is being withheld for state secret reasons."
I'm no fan of the communists, but sometimes I wonder if the media we have covering that area even read the papers or speak the language.
...before you remove the speck in your brothers eye.
I can't stand the hipocrisy any more. China is killing their citizens, but the G8 causing economical turmoil in many, many nations
I grew up watching the damage the G8 nations trade policies do.
I watched, over the years, a small country lose 10% of their GDP annually for several years, because the Clinton administration put pressured Europe to remove favorable trade relations with islands that earn a whooping $50MIL/year from all their endeavors. The companies represented, Dole, could have bought those entire countries 10s of times over.
African farmers can not compete against against the heavily subsidized G8 farmers in the global market. These people are starving to death!!!
I'm not going to defend China. But please don't come off all high and mighty because the damage that the G8 countries are doing is not making the headlines.
Here's one article http://www.redpepper.org.uk/intarch/x-life-and-deb t-review.html
on Jamaica's situation. There are lots of others in the same situation.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I can hear the prestige of China going up fast. A distant hum from other side of the globe.
;)
A second space race would be a really good thing to have:
1) Ignorant republicans will have to think about conquering faraway places like Mars instead of scheming invasions into helpless third world countries here on Earth. Maybe it's better to spend money on spacecraft rather than cruise missiles, don't you think?
2) Perhaps this will result in a Trekkie fantasy future, with China taking the role of the Federation and USA playing faithfully the part of aggressively militaristic and uncivilized Klingons.
Hi, no one wants to go to Mars more than I do, but has anyone noticed that our (if you're in the U.S.) Dear Leader wants us to spend $87 billion on Iraq?
:(
Guess what: if there is a space race, I don't think we'll be involved. Whether we like it or not
[o]_O
i guess one reason why china wants to send more and more of its people to space is to reduce its population (greater than 1 billion) on earth;)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/article show?msid=229586
This is the link to the article. I must point out that this is not an official editorial. It is something like Slashdot where people come and debate.
While there will always be people who will be jealous and try to undermine the chinese achievment, let me assure you that most of us are actually happy at the launch. It will positively influence the space industry in India. Hopefully there will be more funding and more seriousness.
For a lot of us who are Arthur C Clark fan, there was never a doubt that China would be the third.
I noticed this in today's New York Time's article (2nd page) about China's preparations for space flight:
The Chinese named their spacecraft Shenzhou or Divine Vessel. Weighing more than 8 tons and almost 30 feet long, it was slightly larger and heavier than the Soyuz. The main difference is the forward unit, which on the Shenzhou has solar panels and can remain in orbit after the piloted module descends back to Earth.
How many uses are there for these modules, these little electric generators in space? I assume that they are not just scientific/military satellites that are attached to the manned launch. (I may be incorrectly estimating the size of a military satellite). They sound like building blocks that are being left in orbit for future use. What would they be used for? They probably wouldn't be able to change their orbit/trajectory very much, because they probably have little or no fuel.
If that is true, then they are just orbitting electrical generators. I suppose that would be useful for two things (essentially the same). A) they could provide power for satellites, so the satellites themselves could be launched with more instruments. B) they could provide power for space stations, so (again) the volume of future launches could be devoted to habitation rather than power.
I don't know. Are there other possibilities?
Also, I'm going to wait on congratulating China until the taikonaut survives the trip. So far it is still just a worthy attempt.
Right now, people aren't really of much use in space (apart from bragging value) so most space-faring nations have instead used their cash to get useful stuff, like sattelites, out there instead.
From what I've read, the most importance Russian assistance was crew training. The capsul appears based on Soyuz, but was extensively modified and made in China. The LM-2F is based on the DF-5 ICBM with strapon solids (similar to Titan). The pictures I've seen of the Jiuquan launch complex show it is huge-- if you see a picture, look at the flame buckets at the main pad used for this launch--they are massive, comparable to what we used for Apollo and what the Soviets used for Energa. It looks like the Shenzhou-V was stacked in an assembly building, and then slow-tracked to the launch gantry, like the US did with Apollo. This is no threadbare space program, and the appear to have built for a very ambitious effort.
---
Aparrantly some Chinese naval captain called Shen Zhongchang commented "The mastery of outer space will be a requisite for military victory, with outer space becoming the new commanding heights for combat."
What military victory does he have in mind exactly? I wish more corporations were interested in outer space. At least they're only after money.
:wq
Confucius say, he who would walk far must take first step.
Depends, you ever met someone who was a journalism major who was ultra bright?
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Perhaps this will kick the US space program back into gear?
I doubt it. A space program would require a high degree of vision and high-level leadership which our country is not currently capable of.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
All joking aside, however, this should be interesting. In other news, I read in NYTimes today that Shanghai should soon have a building taller than the Petronas Towers (in other words, they'll soon have the tallest building in the world). With the WTC gone and NASA in a pathetic state, it looks like the US has lost its monopoly on highly recognizable symbols of prosperity.
This brings to mind a pilgrimage I made to Cape Canaveral last spring (from San Diego, on a motorcycle ... it's a big country, folks). From my trip log:
Well, today was the big day. I got moving kind of late and didn't arrive at Kennedy Space Center until 11:30AM.
I splurged on the maximum access admission package with all the trimmings and walked on in ... to Disney Space Center.
Don't get me wrong -- there were a lot of unique and cool things to see -- but everything was waaaay too slick and well merchandised for my taste. The "Space Store" was the worst offender, stuffed with every cheesy space-related gewgaw and gimcrack you can think of, just like Disneyland.
Many of the exhibits were models or poorly-executed mockups, and the video presentations were jingoistic joint productions of Nickolodean and the WWII War Deparment's propaganda writers. Rah, rah, rah -- we beat those dirty Russkies to the Moon.
One mockup *was* cool, though. They had a reconstruction of Robert Goddard's (the father of modern rocketry) first liquid fueled rocket. It was interesting to see how big it really was, or rather wasn't. I did a report about Goddard and that rocket in the fifth or sixth grade, so it's one of my favorites.
I took in an Imax feaure on the International Space Station (the other movie was one we own on DVD ... Yeah, I'm a space geek). It was a 3D movie which used polarized glasses (not the red & blue kind) that preserved color fidelity and worked amazingly well on the stuff filmed with a stereoscopic camera.
Afterwards came a 1.5 hour bus tour to the Assembly Building, Launch Complex 39, and some other cool places. Even though it rained like hell, we were forbidden to leave the bus because of intense lightning activity, and the tour narrator's inaccurate or inane comments and responses. Example: a fellow tourist asked who had the most accumulated timein space. She took a tolerably poor guess (Story Musgrave, though he might have gone up more *often* than anyone else). I softly suggested that it was probably one of the Russians who got stuck on Mir when the Soviet Union collapsed, to which she responded "Oh, we're talking about Americans".
Nonetheless, I greatly enjoyed seeing everything once I tuned her out. For a geek like me, LC39 is like Mecca to Space City, Kazakhstan's Medina. At least one of the exhibits credited Korolev's huge role in space exploration, even though he was a damnable commie.
The sales pitch to taxpayers was laid on pretty thick in the form of signs scattered around the grounds touting spin-off technologies and in a fair amount of tour guide & video presentation verbiage. The rest of the pitch consisted of jingoism hat ignored key contributions played by undesireables like that old Nazi Werner von Braun in Alabama. It's really too bad they took this approach since spaceflight is something that should ignore such divisions and should rise above cheap stars'n'stripes'n'pom-poms.
I'm glad I went, though I must say that I had more "wow" moments at White Sands than at the Disney Space Center.
Murphy was an optimist.
But to almost people in China, the fact that the taikonaut is sent to space has nothing to do with them. they only need more job chances, more money.
-- forgive me my poor Engl...
Despite recent advances in economic freedoms, China is still a dangerous totalitarian regime. In the west, we rail against the abuses of the State, and rightly so, but the abuses of the west are nothing compared to China.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/china0803/2.htm#_
http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/nasia/china/
http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1997/1/30_7.html
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/
To say "Go China" is to deny the real and substantial differences between liberal democracies and repressive regimes. I can say that W is a dummy with impunity in the US. Chinese citizens can't do likewise. These freedoms make forums like slashdot possible, and are directly responsible for the wealth and privilege that I and many many others in western democracies enjoy.
I hope that China will join the community of nations that protects the rights of the individual. Maybe the power they now have will help them, and the rest of us, fulfill the promise of the American Declaration of Independence. In the meantime, don't make the deadly and dangerous mistake of confusing interesting technology with "good." Linux and spaceships can be used for good and evil.
*Way to go China*
Kudos to all of the people involved.
Heres hoping for a safe and uneventful journey.
Merlin.
Just to ponder - how else could China have spent that money for the benefits of its citizenry - how many kids could have been sent to college, how much could healthcare of been extended to rural areas without, etc., for the money invested in sending somebody to space? And what has this accomplished other than stroke some egos?
Quack!Quack!.....QUACK!!
They've still got a little work to do today but hopefully their boy will have a gentle touchdown. That of course will be a BIG TOUCHDOWN for China :)
Good work boys, best wishes for your future success.
Let's hope this is the swift kick in the ass that NASA badly needs.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
With the rapid decline of infrastructure in Russia, perhaps not long from now they will stop being able to send humans into outerspace. On our side, with the failures of the shuttles and the deep budget cuts of Bush, things do not look much better.
Perhaps in ten to fifteen years, China will be the only country sending humans into orbit.
and the Americans don't get irony. Everybody knows that.
Spoiler
Despite the evidence such as TV shows like Becker and Seinfeld.
Perhaps, but it'll only be affordable if we outsource the engineering to India and the manufacturing to Taiwan.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
This article from China (in English) provides a good bit more information about Lieutenant Colonel Yang Liwei.
"China invented gunpowder and legend holds that a Ming dynasty (1368-1644) official named Wan Hu attempted the world's first space launch. He strapped himself to a chair with kites in each hand as 47 servants lit 47 gunpowder-packed bamboo tubes tied to the seat.
When the smoke had cleared, Wan was found to have been obliterated. But the dream was not."
-Reuter
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Oh come on... this is slashdot. Do you think anyone here actually knows who Shaq is? And the joke you're referencing?
Now if it were a Monty Python joke, you'd be golden. But anything sports related, and you're boned.
How about them Marlins, eh?
Yeah bad joke :)
Read 1421- The Year China Discovered The World, by Gavin Menzies. This book and it's author have been getting a lot of attention from the archeological community lately 9 see also here, here, here, etc. There's a lot of evidence that suggest that Zhang He's fleet continued east to the americas. Early Western explorers reportedly encountered chinese-speaking peoples in both South and North America.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
Despite all protestations to the contrary, that fact is what missile defence is all about.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'll bet an hour later, he wanted to go again!
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
outed any spies lately?
-pyrrho
everyone saying "uh the race is already over" is pulling from the book of "Things The Hare Said".
An earnest program could easily outpace the current US ability which is tied up in Shuttles and the IIS. Those older style rockets are cheaper. They can get things out of earth orbit. Getting a man in space is to basically catch the hell up in one step.
-pyrrho
China's launched a man in orbit 42 years after the Soviets put the first man in space. A single man in a capsule. Using Russian technology. Realistically, China's space race is against John Carmack.
...about the Chinese using satellites for military purposes are being a little hypocritical.
I suppose you think that all the satellites that the US have put into space over the years are there simply to broadcast reruns of Frasier (Although that could be considered a form of warfare!).
I also can't believe that the spell checker in open office corrected 'frasier' to 'Frasier'! Are American sitcom titles in the standard American dictionary now?
Nice troll - really gave me a good hearty laugh.
Debatable, perhaps, but that may be a source of the legend. 7 voyages, and Cheng Ho (I've also heard it was pronounced "Sin Bao") does kind of sound like "Sinbad".
The fact that Cheng Ho was a eunuch never made it into the legend, curiously enough.
Anyone have any insight into why the Chinese would build their space base in the Gobi Desert, which I believe is in the northern part of the country? Wouldn't it make more sense to stick it on the Tibetan Plateau or somewhere nearer the equator? IIRC, this is why the U.S. space program launches from southern Florida and why I believe most of the Soviet launch sites are in Kazakhtstan (aren't they?)? Just seems like it would make more sense to launch from the southwestern part of the country, where there are still very few people but you get boosts from being nearer the equator and being higher in elevation (you know, less distance to go and weaker gravity at launch, not to mention less air resistance (Hmm, speaking of which, maybe the U.S. should start launching from Mauna Kea instead of Florida - we could make a "space sea-plane" so it would be able to land back in Hawaii)). Just seems that the Gobi Desert, which I assume was chosen more for remoteness than anything else, wouldn't have been the best spot for them to stick their space program (but I guess if they have a launch failure it will impact Mongolia, not China, so maybe thats why).
They seem so desperate to prove to the rest of the world that they're not backwards or technologically inept or whatever it is. They're obsessed with getting into space, building skyscrapers that are taller than those in other countries and they're sinking billions into modernizing Beijing to impress the world during the Olympcs. If all this results in a higher quality of life for the Chinese people, I'm all for it. Unfortunately, I don't think it will.
http://news.google.com/news?q=china+space
Only someone living in a cave (a typical home of a conservative) would not notice that the conservatives are the ones always waging wars. Who is killing innocent people, while losing their own soldiers in a bogus imperial quest of empire building and oil addiction?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
keep the dream alive
Speak truth to power.
I read somewhere that archeologists discovered a pair of fossilized chopsticks at Stonehenge!
Do what you always do and you'll get what you always get, or so the wisdom says. I know some folks who have actually been to China last year and 20 years ago. They say A LOT of things have changed for the better there. I won't be surprised if China becomes the world's most powerful country in 50 years. The have all it takes to become one - huge, well controlled population, ideology, science, and most of all the desire to get better and patience in getting there. They don't rush things. They say if it takes fifty years, so be it. They invest a lot into their industry and science. If they say they'll get a man to the moon, they will get people there, eventually.
Sure, space exploration and quality of life are not terribly related if you look at the surface. But without things like these China will always be the country in which large American corporations exploit cheap labor. Give it time, they'll make their own computers, write their own software, make their own satellites, spaceships, nuclear weapons, anti-missile systems, and so on and so forth. And then suddenly we'll find ourselves going there to work on "H1-B" visas.
Congratulations China, welcome to the 1960's!
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
= 9J =
Me Chinese
Me pray joke
Me put rocket in you ass. Opppsies!
hahahahhahahaa funeee
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
The speed of technology transfer is amazing!
It only took one communist state 35 years to copy the designs of another communist state.
Does this mean Cuba is close behind in the space race?
Your trolling really has gone downhill.
...but not all of them.
YES!!!
We should sue them on behalf of NASA for patent infringements!
I'll bet Darl can offer insights!
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
they accomplished it pretty well, didn't they?
the whole project and launch caught the west totally by suprise.
Why was it such a big deal for the US to catch up to the Soviets and launch a man into space a year after they first did so then? Surely that was irrelavant as the Soviets had already accomplished the task.
"The pictures released by the Chinese media appear to be forged (I'm no rocket scientist, no pun intended), don't rockets typically have some form of a visable exhaust cloud/contrail?"
nope. liquid fueled. look at the visible exhaust cloud from the shuttle's main engines. or rather, don't, because there isn't any.
there are also plenty of film of american launches of purely liquid fueled rockets with no visible exhaust cloud.
you do notice there's a contrail later, when the rocket gets high enough that water vapor from the liquid fueled rocket condenses in the cold air.
take your conspiracy theories elsewhere, and your tinfoil hat too.
I read on the Go Taikonauts site last week and somewhere else but I can't remember where (I think it was the cbc) that the launch would take place Oct 15 at 9:00am Bejing time which it did.
Officially, Chinese claim that Shenzhou 5 is %100 chinese. Unofficially, they say that russian technologies, expertise, and some parts for the rocket and spaceship were "so well paid, that they may be considered chinese".
In 1994 Jiang Zemin and Boris Eltsin preliminarily agreed on Russian-Chinese cooperation in space exploration. In March 1995 they signed a secret agreement on tranfer of russian technologies, as well as sale of rocket components, space suits and key systems of Soyuz to China. The agreement included training of several chinese cosmonauts. In 1996-1997 two Chinese aviators underwent a 14-month course in Russian Training Center, reportedly, for $1mln. Chinese experts thoroughly studied the process of the training. In March 2000 China striked a new accord with Russia, which included production of parts of future "Chinese" space station, more training of the Chinese cosmonauts as well as the earth-bound personnel.
According to experts, China spent some $120mln in Russia on space technologies, parts and services (remark: I wonder how much was spent in US). Total cost of the program was estimated at $2.3bln, which included designing, production, and launch of 3 unmanned and 1 manned spaceships.
Dew leh moh loh!
I'm too sexy for you.
Just because a spacecraft has ablative shielding does not mean that can't be reusable. All it means is that the shielding needs to be replaced. They did this with one of the gemini capsules.
Personally, I think that the re-entry vehicle should be ablatively protected, with soft wings, ie a parafoil or parasail based system.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Here's one of CNN's takes on the Chinese space program:
p ro paganda.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/10/12/china.
CNN, Fox etc have no desire to make this story anything other than a "Chinese aiming to take the war into space therefore we must develop Star Wars and increase defence spending to counter the new threat." Watch for lots of militaristic quotes by Chinese "officials" in your news stories in relation to this event.
The US press is, by and large, simply a mouthpiece for US propaganda as much as it is "real" news. To have them laugh at the Chinese for their space program is rather ironic given the recent spate of US space failures. Remember also that Cape Canaveral was designed so that the viewing gallery was lined up with the launch pad and sunset, to generate more evocative photos. I love good space PR photos as much as the next guy, but to have CNN badmouth the Chinese for their PR is simply a disgusting display of just how screwed up the "free" US is today.
Americans, the most important lesson I can impress upon you is this: Take everything your media tells you with a large helping of salt, and do your best to find out the real story behind the "story". If you view everything by asking "What is the real purpose of this story?" and trying to work out who has the most to gain by giving you the story in the context you see it in, then you will be one step closer to being able to figure out the world around you without being blinded by your own country's propaganda (and don't kid yourself, it IS propaganda).
To the Chinese I say well done and congratulations on your achievement. May we work together in space as a united species forever, free from earthly politics and prejudices, to go further and faster than we ever have before, for the greater good of mankind.
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
Not to mention the fact that the chinese have had rockets for CENTURIES.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
My wife is Chinese, and she is very excited about and proud of this launch. Don't underestimate how much this event will boost their national pride.
China has an economic advantage when it comes to putting people in space: their people are smaller.
This is great to see. Hopefully China will land on the moon soon, replace the US flags, and annoy the NASA enough to start the world's biggest game of capture the flag!
How could there have been that kind of rhetoric when the USSR launched sputnik? That was fourty years ago, and, ummm, the whole thrust of the 'rhetoric' you quoted is with regard to said fourty years.
A Good Intro to NetBS
It would be pretty easy to find out, the US (and presumably Russia) both have satellites in orbit that can detect any major missle or rocket launch within seconds, and I'm sure that once it's in low earth orbit that Norad, SDC, and a host of other tracking sites could easily see it.
However, China has no reason to fake this. It's pretty clear that they've been wanting this for a while, and trying to fake it would be disasterous.
As far as the exaust, they use a different fuel than the shuttle uses, it's hydrogen peroxide based I believe, and it was chosen in large part due to it's less toxic exaust plume. It wouldn't surprise me if it burned a lot cleaner than the mix we use.
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.
when we are going to spend 80-100 billion in
Iraq. Add to that anyother country that we
go for. Also, we do not have the same fear that
we had in the 60s over Russian space victories.
We were truely scared and it drove us to want to
not only be in space, but be there first.
Lets face it, we do not have the same drive for
another space race. We are too mired in worrying
about terrorism, rebuilding bombed-out countries,
creating a working missle-defense system, stupid shuttle missions that are pointless, building more nuclear carriers, and erections and hair loss.
The 60s space race had this country working for a common goal ( while the Vietnam war was tearing us apart). I dont see us working for a common goal anymore.
I wrote in the article yesterday on the amazing amount racist xenophobia posted here whenever some other nation achieves something new in a scientific or technological field.
I am simply flabbergasted. Instead of congratulating the Chinese for a well planned, robust and cheap human space effort, which it is, there are literaly hundreds of hateful, ignorant, racist posts filled to the brim with spite and jealously. And I think it's a real problem with a lot of Americans because it happens so consistently. You want to know why so much of the world has a poor opinion of the USA? Read slashdot, where the supposedly technophile elite make comments based on a lack of knowledge, a sense of low self esteem and jealousy.
In my opinion, if there is anything that will be the undoing of the USA, it is those attitudes, because jealousy never won a space race. There's an old saying that basing one's actions on jealousy or envy is a guarantee of failure.
You want my real opinion? No, you don't but here it is anyway.
The China of today is, if anything, a fascist market state. The ignorance displayed here on Chinese (well, on any non US) poiltics is symbolic of a nation stearing blindly to its own future. The nominally Communist party has very little in common with collectivisation or any other tenets of Marx or Mao's preachings.
The Chinese have achieved a human launch in space with a well paced programme that has taken it's time and not rushed things, which is why this has gone so smoothly. It has done this with a budget that is less than 1/7th of NASA's. And before you start yet another round of 30 year old technology trolling, may I point out to you that the computing power in the Chinese rocketry is at least 20 years newer than that in the Space Shuttle.
NASA would be well advised to take a lesson from the simplicity and pacing of the Chinese programme.
No one can fuck w/China. The MAD clause applies to them as well as to any nuke-enabled country. Now they are spacebound too. The pinnacle of science has obviously been reached by the Chinese too. Better watch out for them.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Ok, the chinese are credited with gunpowder and rockets as well as the magnetic compass and a lot of early work on navigation. China wasn't so interested in colonies though, more in trading posts, which have a tendancy to be more transient. Their neighbours, in Mongolia (relevant, they ran China for a while) were somewhat more 'adventurous' reaching the gates of Vienna - they weren't sea explorers, but that is still a vast space to cover.
See my journal, I write things there
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.
Xinhua said the craft carried astronaut Yang Liwei, 38.
I'm surprised they didn't send his brother - Mil Kiwei.
Gerv
It would be very difficult to fake a luanch these days. Too many countries are looking up (and down). We can be 100% certain that there is a capsule in space orbiting the earth. Whether it is manned is another question, however although vehicle to ground communications may be encrypted, it can be clear that transmissions are coming from the capsule.
See my journal, I write things there
Hey, Komarov was a hero. I was born in East Germany, my school was named after Vladimir Komarov. But soon after the German reunification, it was renamed to 'Heinrich-Schliemann-Gymnasium' for both political and historical reasons, as Schliemann, went to school there.
If indeed they wanted to fake anything, the only thing worth faking would be the presence of an astronaut aboard the craft, not what for most purposes is a routine launch.
Maybe this somehow is the first steps to getting rid of their Communism. Russia dropped it less than 40 years after going to space. I have no idea why this relates, I'm drunk. :)
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
... and people thought that the US moon mission was just a Hollywood stunt.
This time, so as to stay in space for the long haul, we need to push nanotech research so as to develop cheap methods of getting and living in space (like the space elevator and cheaper launch vehicles). We will also need nanotech repair nanobots so we can live in the high-radiation eviroment of space and of course, the health advantages of nanotech to reverse things like muscle wating in zero G etc. Growing space stations and bases on the moon would be needed, plus the super AI automation needed to build/run/maintain all these space life support systems. We will probablly need all this technology here on earth soon, as we are polluting ourselves out of exisitence here and our present econimic systems here on earth cannot evolve fast enough and are incapable of adapting to including the natural world as part of the equation. The only way we can survive as a half-decent world is to restore most of the earths biospere (for example, I read on the bbc web site, that the world's oceans are getting more acidic due to C02 pollution, that's a really bad sign). Developing non-polluting nanotech industries, most improtant, we need to eliminate materialism (as a cultural icon and goal) through nanotech produced/recycled items (since all objets would be described as a cad file to be replicated) is a good start.
Because, of course, dogs being cute and fluffy and cows not being cute and fluffy puts them in a completely different league. Unless you're a vegetarian, it's pretty hypocritical to complain about people eating cats and dogs while regularly shoving cow parts down your jaded throat. Just because we've deigned a certain animal as a pet, it doesn't magically transcend to some level above cows and pigs. Meat is meat.
Am I completely wrong, or was Saturn V not designed by Werner von Braun?
He was a teensy-weensy bit nazi nein?
=#= Man, you are such a loser! Why can't you be an individual, like the rest of us?
somewhere nearer the aequator. browse at space.com for more information.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
But none of them beat
..capsule burns up on re-entry."
"Russians send Lance Bass into space..
Have you seen FOX News lately? Or at all? Not to mention MSNBC. CNN may be right-wing, but it's left of those piss-holes.
IIRC Indonesian maps used to show Australia as "greater Irian", i.e. part of Indonesia.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/ktc lips/apollo_11_liftoff.mpgv /office/pao/History/alsj/ktc lips/ap15_liftoff.mpg
http://www.hq.nasa.go
where's all the smoke?
Judging from both links giving a 404 error, I'd say there were none.
& ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en
http://images.google.com/images?q=apollo+launch
On the other hand, has PLENTY.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
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.
Any person that goes into space is properly called astronaut in English.
Cosmonaut and the even more hideous term used in this article are concoctions of people that tried to be too clever and that had (or have) a political agenda that in nothing contributes to describe the facts.
For a clue, you should always check media that is not always stupid, like the BBC who are calling this person an astronaut as he should be called.
For a better explanation check Wikipedia.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
its that difficult to remove the spaces from the slashdot-mangled urls?
no wonder you have such difficulty with basic gradeschool physics.
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.
Wow. That's even loonier than most of the really loony Nazi experimental weapons programs (at least if done using WW2 tech). I imagine it never left the "drawn on napkin" concept stage, thank god. Eventually, we're going to find out they were planning to build a cyber-Hitler with gatling guns for arms, aren't we...
Freedom: "I won't!"
it's a simple thing for nasa, ESA et. al. to check if the chinese got something up there or not. o course they've done so and of course they would have voiced consern if there was nothing to be found up there. For christ sake, it's not like the chinese haven't put stuff up in LEO before (think satellites) , it's not even the first time they put the capsule up there, it's only the first time it's manned
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
In fact, Hughes / Boeing got into big trouble with the State Department for "exporting" too much technical information to the Chinese the last time they helped them launch a satellite using Sea Launch. Imagine that...
The China of today is, if anything, a fascist market state. The ignorance displayed here on Chinese (well, on any non US) poiltics is symbolic of a nation stearing blindly to its own future. The nominally Communist party has very little in common with collectivisation or any other tenets of Marx or Mao's preachings.
Sorry for going off-topic. Honestly speaking, I see very little difference between practical applications of Fascism (3rd Reich, Mussolini's Italy) and Communism (Soviet Union, China). The rhetoric is different, but the practical effects are similar: a totalitarian state. Minorities (Jews or Tibetans or whatever) are persecuted, no criticism of the government is allowed, censorship and corruption are part of everyday life, military has a very important role in politics, ... the rant goes on and on.
A political decision ("put more money in a space program") is made in an entirely different environment in the USA. When the small, monolithic elite decides something in China, everyone has to shut up, expect when they are told to cheer. In USA, congress, elections, mass media and all the NGO:s influence the politics. Threefolding the Space Program spending for a decade is so much easier when you have no checks or balances.
I too channel surfed between several news channels looking for pictures, and I don't know if or when CNN Headline News finally said something about it, but at 10:00pm (ET) Aaron Brown on CNN had the launch as the lead story.
Given the Bush administration's avowed policy of thwarting any other nation's attempt at building a comparable military technology (viz the rancor directed at North Korea and Iran, both of which have nuclear capability) I'm wondering how the US military perceives this rather impressive tech advance from China.
Btw, there's probably little hope left for the US reviving the space program as long as Bush is in office. He and his friends are making far too much money from cost overruns in Iraq. When the administration can ask for $90 billion (US) to "rebuild" Iraq, it seems evident to me that there's less than 0 interest in such a program. Science, education, and social programs are things of the past, as far as the Bush administration is concerned.
A few weeks ago I watched "Apollo 13" again. Considering the history presented in that movie I had to wonder if the US would ever know such days again in my own lifetime. Sadly, I doubt it.
This is my opinion. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Maybe this giant chopstick circling the planet will remind NASA they are not special, and they need to get off their high horses and start actually DOING something aside from murdering astronauts. (Gee LeeRoy, that tanker full of gas leaving the processing plant just hit somethin and sprung a leak...reckon we shouldin do somethin? Naw, then weez might look stupid lets let it just blow up and burn away so in nobody notices.)
Props to China, I hope many more great successes come their way so the twits at NASA are cleaned up and fresh smart blood can be brought in to actually do something. Who knows, someday in our lifetimes we may all end up as just earthlings and not capitalists or socialists nor muslim or christian or other brainwashed labels. Just PIGS IN SPACE!
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
don't know why no orbital launches from there.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Of course the problem isn't actually building one (And you'd get what equates to a modern day nuclear pop-gun), its getting hold of highly enriched Uranium 235 and casting it into two sub critical masses. Thats extremly hard, and only six countries have managed it in over 60 years.
You seem to be forgetting India, Pakistan, and South Africa (who got rid of their bombs in the 90's).
Idiot/Savant
The negative reactions in this country to the Chinese launch are in large part because it helps prop up a totalitarian regime that is itself quite xenophobic and draws legitimacy from a nazi-like notion of herrenrasse (master race) and has expansionist ambitions. That is a bad thing.
But putting that aside, I agree with you that this is a good thing for humanity and god bless the Chinese for this feat. I hope that they crank right along and put a space station in orbit and then a base on the moon, because the US, Europeans, and Russians need a kick in the butt to get moving again. I want to visit Mars someday, and it seems like the only way it's going to happen is with another space race.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Thanks for posting a decent non trolling answer. I appreciate it.
One shouldn't forget that the Chinese space effort isn't soley there for this manned space programme. Indeed, this programme is just a fraction of their launch capabilities. Condsider that this budget also covers military satellites and launches, which are under the aegis and budget of the military in the US, as well as their commercial satellite launching capability and the work they are doing on building satellite launches with solid fueled rockets that would enable them to launch satellites in extremely short order.
As for the comparisons of Fascism and Communism, and their oppression of people, wel, I think you're patrly right. They certainly do meet at a certain point, but have some significant differences, those mostly relating to economic collectivisation and Communism's theoretical equality of workers worldwide, two things that were radically different in the principles of the Third Reich. China, however, does definitely tend to xenophobic views, that is true.
if the Chinese use 1/7th of NASA:s budget, I think it is expensive. I haven't heard of any big Chinese Space achievements before this.
Okay, so they don't have any YET. So think now: The US ALREADY has space shuttles, launch sites, laboratories, test facilities, all that stuff they keep using. Chineese had to build all that starting from scratch.
Comparison: You have a car and spend $700 a year to keep it running. Meantime I build myself (or buy?) a car and maintain it for a year for $100. And yet you bitch at me saying that my car looks worse than yours and has unfashionable engine, plus I'm from Kentucky and in Kentucky everyone fucks chickens.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
They are not mature enough to have this sort of power. The entire project should have been ordered dismantled by the rest of the world.
The security of the world just dipped to a new low with this event.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I sure hope so. This morning CNN had a survey sidebar asking whether the event would spark a new "cold-war style space race" but I couldn't find a button for "about time, too." Somehow they managed to make it sound like a bad thing.
I suspect the Chinese space program has a very utilitarian objective. The leaders of China don't want China to become another Japan, a country whose growth rate was once the envy of the world but is now stumbling from recession to recession. Floundering in a sea of Playstations and Pokemons, Japan has turned into a leisure society.
Since the middle of the last century there have been two ways a country can jumpstart its economy or, in the case of China, maintain its high growth rate. One is war, or rather, the preparation for war (and its corollary, the recovery from such a fiasco). A dramatic example is the post World War I economic miracle that was Hitler's Germany.
But this is a route that China, addicted unlike the former Soviet Union to world trade, cannot take. It seems that only the U.S., in its inertial role as the sole surviving superpower of the Cold War era, can undertake a massive military build-up without the threat of a trade embargo being raised.
So China is left with the only other modern path to continued progress. And that is in the glorious waste of natural resources that is a space program. In the end maybe the only way humanity is going to reach Mars is via some enhanced version of the Long March rockets of Chairman Mao.
There is a huge difference between building on more rudimentary technology, and "enhancing" technology that already meets the required specifications. Your analogy is like saying that inventing the automobile was easy because horse drawn carriages already existed ("US space programme was based on German technology"), while the better analogy for the Chinese space program would be the creation of a new Car company in the 21st century, when automobile design is extremely well understood and working models can be studied that already meet all the design specifications. There is no comparison.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Now have any English-speaking astronauts actually reached Proxima Centauri? The Russians are more honest in claiming only to be explorers of the cosmos, which could begin at end of your nose.
"Perhaps this will kick the US space program back into gear?"
I sure hope so. Our space program has really deteroriated. Being an outsider (not employed in the space industry), I cannot say for certain but this is was it seems to me:
I feel that NASA has become so afraid of an accident or death that they are almost paralysed from doing anything progressive. Look how long it's going to be before a shuttle goes back up. Not until late 2004. So in the meantime our space program just flops around pretending to do something.
Please don't mistake me. An astronauts life is valuable and we should make every effort to ensure they can do their work safely.
But it seems like we are afraid to anything anymore because someone might die. All we're ever willing to do anymore beyond the ISS and shuttle flights is unmanned probes. And the commitment and motivate for these are low. Come on. By now, IMO, we ought to have a sustainable permanent platform on the moon. By now, we should have people on their way to mars.
Instead, we're thinking about a manned mission. And we're thinking about alternative robot missions too. Let's quit thinking and start doing! I want to retire somewhere other than this planet plz.
The greatest value isn't the propaganda but the focusing of resources. A space program lets a governments wastes a country's resources more efficiently than a similar program to create a million Playstations. Japan's tragedy is that it didn't do it first, when it had the resources for the last two decades.
I loved this bit from CNN.com:
All I could keep thinking is that he'll be hungry again an hour later! (Luckily it is only a short flight.)
{ - Generic Guy - }
You are right, in that both types of regime are totalitarian, with little regard for individual liberty. The principle difference is Fascists believe in and support the concept of private property. As a rule of thumb, if a totalitarian government has privately owned industries then it is usually called fascist. Other distinctions along the Left-Right political spectrum are also present in their attitudes, for example should a government be secular (left wing and communist) or should it support religious morality (right wing and fascist)
China over the last 20 years has gradually abandoned communist trappings like collectivised farming, so by this definition they be called fascist.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
On the one hand, I mostly agree with all of you that this may finally get those lazy you-know-whats at NASA off their sofas and back to work...Then I remember that we have a true nincompoop running NASA.
It's time we put ENGINEERS back in charge of NASA instead of appointing politicians and, more recently, a bean-counter as its administrator.
Case in point: On Sep 10, Congress cross-examined said bonehead about an intriguing idea that a Joe Ordinary engineer published in an op-ed which can be read here. It's breif, very well-versed and I definitely recommend reading it, but the ghist of it is instead of completely scrapping the shuttle (referred to as STS) and all of its infrastructure and personnel, that it is technologically and financially (read as cheaper) possible to take those people and task them to refitting existing shuttle hardware to go to Mars. Jobs are saved, progress is made, and all for cheap--irresistable, right?
Not to our resident killjoy administrator Sean O'Keefe. At the hearings, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) entered the full text of the op-ed into the Congressional Record, and then asked NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe what he thought of it. Mr. O'Keefe responded defending NASA's current approach, saying that the ideas in the op-ed represented "wrong headed thinking."
It would seem, ironically enough, that NASA is behaving the way we would expect a communist regime to--CYA tactics. We saw this same behavior prior to the Soviet Union's fall (cheer): shunning innovation and new ideas in a desperate bid for self-preservation. To complete the irony, China is doing the opposite in their design for their spacecraft, going with the new school of thought in space travel: Using inexpensive off-the-shelf technology and using unconventional engineering and logistics. The former, make fun of it all you want, but the Soyuz is a tried and tested spacecraft. It beats spending billions on dollars of money wrenched from the hands of peasants to make a new bigger craft when a Soyuz is all you need for the job.
By the latter, I refer to this detachable portion obviously meant for space station construction. This sort of approach has been called for by several engineers recently, most notably Dr. Robert Zubrin, the author of the op-ed. A few years ago, he sent NASA his idea for a Mars mission involving sending a return vehicle to Mars FIRST and have it make propellant from the chemicals in the atmosphere, and have the crew arrive in a separate "hab" craft. At the conclusion of the mission, they ditch the craft and leave in the return vehicle. Repeat several times, then can hook those unused habs together and--PRESTO! Instant Martian base! And all for the same cost as the shuttle.
NASA didn't take too kindly to having someone challenge their plan, which involved huge orbital stations, orbiting shipyards, a lunar refueling base, and everything else logistically necessary to support it all. Price tag: $450 billion. It would seem though, that this sort of idea has found a new home with China, who are willing to adapt and accept new ideas like this.
I certainly do hope that this will start a new space race that will end with the US on top, but I have my doubts. It's sort of a shame, we have everything we need to make, say, a mission to Mars possible.
I for one welcome China to the 1960's.
The scene, any bar along the Asian Pacific coast.
Man: Hey baby, I'm a yuhangyuan--man gets slapped
Man: But baby, I'm going up tomorrow--man gets drink thrown in face
Woman: I don't care how hung you are, or what you hang on it. NOT IF YOU WERE THE LAST MAN ON EARTH!
Man: No, you don't understand. I'm going to be the first man off Earth.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Since I prefaced my comment with empire building and oil addiction, you are wrong :)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Maybe it doesn't have any solid fuel engines and has just liquid fueled engines?
What the US did to Native Americans and to slaves was appalling. The only difference is that the US does not currently do those things (or at least when it does, those responsible are punished when caught). In China, these things still happen. The attitude in China seems to be that the motherland can do no wrong, anything it does is OK. This leads to a higher probability of atrosities being committed.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Now we've got another bunch of "Commies" to compete against in the space race. NASA, get your ass in gear and lets get that Mars program going! Viva Capitalism!
Advancement in Science is of benifit to everyone! I look forward to the day we we all see each other as brothers and sisters of our beautiful planet.
Then we can get together and fight the evil alien empire that lives on pluto.
http://www.ohlssonvox.com
The Chinese move is simply a challenge to the US dominance of space. It is the equivalence of a country's first successful nuclear test.
It's really difficult to have a new in slashdot nowadays...
English is not my native language !
Omg, it's a fascist state so it's ok? Jesus H. Christ in a Chicken Basket, you are severely lacking in the brain department!
Will code a sig generator for food
"Perhaps this will kick the US space program back into gear?"
There's only one thing that would kick the US space program back into gear - a dedicated public, and dedicated leaders. Right now, the public seems more dedicated towards gasing up their SUV's, learning who's going to be voted off the island next, or who's the next WWF Wrestling champion. First man on the moon is exiting. Good TV. Next exiting thing is first man on Mars, and that's beyond the attention span of the average American. Sad to say.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This message has been scanned for memes and dangerous content by MindScanner, and is believed to be unclean.
Star Trek lives...in Chinese...
Very soon Chinese channels will be coming out with their own version of space travel series. Given the quality of recent ST series, I would not be surprised if they cooked up something way better than ST franchise.
Hope lives...in China.
we could make a "space sea-plane" so it would be able to land back in Hawaii
Actually, we should make a "space fishing-boat". Then we could call it the "Bebop".
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Mars should not be the next expected goal. Capability should be the next goal. Human spaceflight capability for the US hasn't changed since 1982. The Shuttle and ISS are very old designs, and the ISS is arguably just a replacement for the MIR which worked just fine till it exceeded life-expectancy. We need a spacecraft that can actually leave LEO (the Shuttle can't). We need a lunar transfer vehicle that can go from the ISS to the moon. We need landing craft for the moon. Wee need modules for the moon. THEN (and only then) should we look at expanding that capability ro Mars. If we can live in a vacuume on the Moon, we will be able to handle the low pressure and radiation we will face at 3AU's on Mars. Most of this technology is derivative of current technology, not new technology. It is far cheaper to do it in increments than all at once (the 50 billion Mars price-tag) but we need NASA to have a vision and a road map to get there. We currently have neither.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Login to heavens-above.com . After you're logged in, click on "Shenzhou 5". It will show you visibility times for your location and its current position (unfortunately for me, it won't be visible before it de-orbits).
This is a great step for mankind! Hopefully this will snap the space program into gear again.
When I was a kid I heard we were supposed to build a station on the moon. A lunar space station would be the ultimate space station. Instead we got sidetracked with the space shuttle, and a poorly designed one at that. We should have used the X-33 type model. And proceded to build a lunar station with the Saturn V technology. The Chinese are smart, they may not have the same political views as the rest of us, but they are smart, and I believe capable of landing on the moon.
This would have been the year to launch a
mission to mars, but we missed it.
I'd love to see a manned mars mission in my lifetime.
It's a fuckin' typo, you anal-retentive loser. How do you survive the real world as tightly wrapped as you are?
Massive quantities of beer.
(lighten up, Francis.. it was a little joke...hah hah)
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Perhaps this will kick the US space program back into gear?
Huh? I didn't realize the USA had a space program.
You can take your "space race" sentiments and stick them firmly up your backsides. The last space race was a race to the bottom, and we've piles of rusting equipment in America to prove it. Fads and glitter can't replace a soundly built, functional space transportation system that serves to feed Human enterprise and living. We never had such a system, and still today, mention manufacturing and living in space environments and people will give you that "what a nutter" look.
Government has only proven itself incapable of understanding how to expand culture into space. Myself, I'm placing my hopes on private enterprise seeking out exploitation of space transportation and eventually mining of energy and material resouces.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
When China's CDP is corrected for its artificially devalued currency, it exceeds Japan, which is current #2. Therefore it has a fair amount of resources to do ambitious projects like a space program.
China's currency has been fixed at 8.3 to the dollar. It thought to be really worth much more, somewheres between 3-5 to the dollar. The US and WTO have been pressuring China to float its currency. A cheap currency keeps labor costs and exports cheap and imports expense, so China has the largest trade surplus in the world.
Unfortunately, communism is one of those things that only works in theory.
I have a very strong suspicion that the West will be unable to extracate itself from the ethnic conflicts that are so beseting it -- arising from globalist projection of power -- and that China will be able to develop its ability to project power to space unimpeded.
China should give back Tibet to the Tibetans however this is nothing compared to what the West should give back not only to those not of European ancestry but to those of European descent who no more "Western" in its globalist colonialism than Tibetans are Chinese.
As I've said before:
Is China so committed? If we learn nothing from NASA at all but the following, the investment in NASA may have been worthwhile:Seastead this.
"I feel good," Yang radioed back from space, followed by "Doodle-oodle-oodle-oo, I knew that I would!"
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
China can say how great their accomplishment is, but the fact remains that most of their stuff is refurb Russian hardware. It would be like the US selling Mexico or Brazil some old equipment. (Actually, it would not be a bad idea for the US to start using some of the simpler, proven tech to send people into space.)
What I'm surprised at is why the Europeans haven't done this before? They've been launching satellites for years. What's stopping them from putting a guy in a capsule and putting it in orbit?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
So are you one of those guys that say we never made it to the moon?
Don't you think that every friggin radar station NORAD has on the planet is tracking that thing? Don't you think that they saw the heat plume immediately upon launch and started watching it then?
Don't you think that maybe JUST MAYBE it's not the place of the US Government, or any other government besides China's to reproduce or rebroadcast China's military transmissions? You can't even rebroadcast / reproduce transmissions of baseball games without the written authorization of the commissioner of Major League Baseball.
Don't you think there would be some diplomatic hot water, or perhaps showing some of NSA / CIA's cards if they were to do so?
Sell conspiracy somewhere else, we're all stocked up here.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Can't wait to get some of those little concrete trinkets made by the chinese moon dust farmers in 2030!
At least now China has an alternate place to send all of its political prisoners....the exile to Tibet thing just didnt work out.
Turns out the Chinese actually got rocketry help from the same guy, Von Braun, that got the US and USSR started. Was in the US Army too, before being sent back to China for being called a communist. See this article as posted here in the Toronto Star.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
Ooh, someone decided to gang up on me too, by getting his buddies to mod down my original question "Has anyone verified this?", and then, when I respond to the personal attack, the previous posting gets modded to flamebait. Did anyone modding this actually read the thread in question?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Stop with the conspiracy kook line. I believe we made it to the moon. However, it wouldn't take much for any agency to state that there WAS a capsule in orbit.
Remember Sputnik? When that was launched, the US and European agencies verified the launch within hours, and broadcast it over the news media shortly afterwards. So what's keeping them from doing so now, in an age when a news report can be issued seconds after verification?
THAT is what I'm asking. And honestly, you should be ashamed for deciding to flame rather than at least ask the same question.
Until the Chinese release footage, or anyone with a telescope or radio reciever can verify there's a capsule in orbit, the publicity photos released by the Chinese will remain just that. Publicity photos.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Asking for proof is neither paranoia or conspiracy related. It's a legitimate (but thanks to the replies, now has been modded into obscurity) inquiry as to whether or not the launch was verified. Ground stations could verify these things right off the bat, and yet nobody has done so.
So why is everyone so defensive of the Chinese, and so desperate to avoid the issue, lowering themselves to flaming and personal attacks, rather than *gasp* saying something as simple as "I don't know"?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
The biggest social problem of today is TOO MUCH CONTROL and inspection of our personal lives. Most people today feel like we can't take a dump in america without somebody having something to say about it. If we felt we were opening up a new frontier, even if we ourselves didn't get to go, we'd feel better about our miserable cubicles.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Now only 1 circle and half left on orbit. He will be back soon. Good luck.
So why is everyone so defensive of the Chinese, and so desperate to avoid the issue, lowering themselves to flaming and personal attacks, rather than *gasp* saying something as simple as "I don't know"?
I suspect the reason people aren't saying "I don't know" in response to your interesting proposition is pretty simple: they do know, and you were wrong. It happens to all of us, though most often to myself.
I agree that your initial posting deserves better moderation, but I don't think the moderation cabal is after you for political reasons. I suspect someone came across your sometimes-inflamatory replies, didn't get the joke (if any), and *then* followed the thread to the top and modded you down. Not fair, but understandable.
I'll see what I can do in M2, though the chance of running across any related moderations is a value of x where x < slim and x > none.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
USA interests SHOULD come first, foremost and exclusively.
The rest of the looser countries can take a flying leap.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Minorities (Jews or Tibetans or Muslims or whatever) are persecuted, no criticism of the government is allowed, censorship and corruption are part of everyday life, military has a very important role in politics, ... the rant goes on and on.
Are we talking about the Nazis and the Communists or are we talking about the USA? Think about it for a second before you mod me down.
Back on topic:
I haven't heard of any big Chinese Space achievements before this.
You have to start somewhere. We didn't have much of a space program in the 60s, but we built one with a manned program. We didn't start with Hubble; we didn't start with GPS; we didn't start with shuttles and a space station; we started with launching a man into space and went from there. China's doing the same thing. Why criticize their space program for starting from zero? That's where they're at, so that's where they're starting from. We did the same thing 40 years ago, and now we've all forgotten about it. Go China.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
did you know that the pidgeon (actually Columba livia or rock dove) is the only bird in the world that can drink liquids by using suction? all others have to take a beakful of liquid and then tilt their heads back to dring.
in their native, non-urban, environment, columba livia eats seeds by grabbing the top of a stalk of grass with its beak, shaking the stalk, and then picking up the seeds that fall. a practice that is equally effective with pizza crusts.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
So, any estimate of the actual values of these 2 quantities? (NASA budget vs. commercial satellite industry gross / profits)
I'm not familiar with that data, and would appreciate a hint, even if 1960 vs. 2000 dollars aren't adjusted, and there's only 1 significant digit. I suppose something on google would tell me, if I had a half hour to bumble around looking...
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
This may well prove to be the best way to advance our adventures into space, especially as the ESA and NASA projects are so expensive at the moment.
Always reminds me of the story of NASA spending millions of dollars designing a pen that can be used upside down, and the Russians just using a pencil!
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000192.html