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.
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.
Hopefully this will cause NASA and the US gov't to focus more on the need for ongoing space exploration.
Does anyone know how to say, "Capricorn One", in Chinese?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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
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!
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.
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?)
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/shefacts.htm
m
:)
m
"The Shenzhou spacecraft appears similar to the Russian Soyuz, but is different in dimensions (slightly larger and heavier) and does not seem to use any detailed parts copied from the Soyuz or built under license. Therefore although it follows the classic layout of the Soyuz, adopts many of the same technical solutions, and the re-entry vehicle has the same shape, it cannot be considered strictly a 'copy'. And if one considers Shenzhou to be a copy of the Soyuz, then was the Soyuz design stolen - from the American General Electric Apollo spacecraft proposal?"
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/wastolen.ht
More linked stuff
"Whoever flies aboard Shenzhou-5, they will not be the first person born in China to fly in space. William Anders, born in Hong Kong, orbited the moon in December 1968. Shannon Lucid, born in Shanghai, holds the world record for a woman for time in space (over 223 days in space on 5 spaceflights). And physicist Taylor Wang, also born in Shanghai, spent seven days in space aboard shuttle mission STS-51-B in 1985."
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/couzhou5.ht
I'm all for the Chinese entering space, but like the Soviets before and after the Second World War and the reconstruction of Germany in the 30s these technological and engineering feats have been accomplished through social and political changes which lead to the deaths of millions and the destruction of cultural identities for millions more.
Good luck to the crew and the staff who accomplished this, and I hope that we will see less and less oppression in China of thier minorities.
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.
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.
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!
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...
See this link. This link is also relevant; it has various facts and figures on the Shenzhou.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
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.
It's one thing to design something yourself, and quite another to take a complete design that already works and tweak it.
Like we oh-so-clever Yanks did with the WWII German designs and follow-ons by German engineers?
Thought so.
Murphy was an optimist.
The policies of the G8 do not lead to starvation in Africa. Africans die because of a lack of infrastructure.
Life isn't far, the economic policies of the G8, the EU, NAFTA aren't far all the time to all the people.
However the G8 and EU and NAFTA are not executing people who refuse to move from thier farms to a factory city. The G8 and EU and NAFTA are not machine-gunning protesters in thier respective capitals, nor are the G8 and EU and NAFTA causing 8 to 10 million to die a year by forcing collectivization.
If I sounded high and mighty, I'm sorry, but I know that the successes and failures of the American Space Programs didn't come from slave labor, prisoning scientists who fail and aren't built on the bones of the millions who didn't die during the Dust Bowl of the 30s or the hard winters of the late 50s or 60s.
The Soviet and Communist Chinese industrial and scientific successes are built on the bones of millions of dead.
It's one thing to design something yourself, and quite another to take a complete design that already works and tweak it.
Like open source?
Why reinvent the wheel on the first trip? Give them a little while to sort things out.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The Race never ends. And we have not lapped anyone, because we stopped advancing. The shuttle, while cool, gives us no advantages over a Chinese rocket based program.
They will catch up quick. In fact, they are basically all caught up as of today. China doesn't have to build a shuttle to catch... in fact, they and the ISS are slowing US down... so those things are going to make it easier for China to catch up.
China is saying "space science is still important". We can agree or disagree, but we can't sit on our laurels and expect it to last long.
-pyrrho
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).
Yeah, cause we totally have no idea where this top secret facility is or what it looks like. If Space Imaging has these kinds of pictures of it, I imagine the NSA was double checking the equations on the Chinese engineers' clipboards.
------
Where are the slash-groupies? I distinctly remember being promised slash-groupies!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, google for chinese manned space mission.
The first result: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-02zi.html
Date: Apr 9, 2002 !
I quote:
In a report that the Chinese media widely published on Apr. 3 and 4, a space official hinted strongly that China would attempt the first manned launch with the Shenzhou-5 (SZ-5) mission next year
Hot damn, that was a surprise. They published it only 18 months earlier. Manned space missions from China? Who knew??
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.
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 think you need to stop getting your history from your much-celebrated "U.S. media". The sixties space race was just as much a piece of nationalist propaganda as China's space program is today. It was as much about discrediting communism as it was anything else. The first satellite, the first astronaut were all serious embarrasments for the "leader of the free world", and the last thing the U.S. government was going to do at that point was let the Soviets beat them again.
Continuing, I don't know how you can say that the U.S. has the most diverse media in the world. You're extrapolating from the fact that yes, there are a large number of media sources ultimately available, but the fact remains that the majority of the news reoprted here comes from a very small number of large media corporations, whose loyalty to actually reporting the news is very questionable (i.e., Disney/ABC, General Electric/NBC, Westinghouse/CBS, The "vast right-wing conspiracy"/Fox, Time Warner/CNN). The existence of all those other media sources is irrelevant, as they realistically constitute a very small portion of the media spectrum, and not the portion that influences public opinion. Compare this to Europe, where a the media is more evenly divided between a greater number of news agencies, who arguably represent a larger spectrum of views, given the European tendency for individual media outlets to be far more ideological. Of course, when you compare the U.S. to the rest of the world, you're probably just thinking about Russia or Cuba...
Get off your high horse. The U.S. has a number of good things going for it, but your posting is way too in the vain of "America uber alles" nationalism to be taken seriously. If you're afraid to seriously critique and recognize the flaws in your own country, then you're also unreliable as a source of praise.
fuck you.