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China Plans 5-day Manned Space Mission
rune writes "Both the BBC and The Register have articles on China's next manned space mission. This time two taikonauts are planned to be on board the Shenzou VI spacecraft sometime during 2005 for about five days. There is also a brief mention of the plans of the Chinese Space Agency for lunar exploration." hrld1,kon adds a link to this article on Chinaview, the official English-language news source for the People's Republic of China.
I wish the US would get involved in this race to explore too, there's a problem though. The preseidencial candididate that favors space exploration the most is bush (the one thing I agree with him on). Unfortunately bush doesnt get along with our neighbors all that well. One could say that this is good, itll drive competition.
NO! This is very bad.
A cooperative effort is really needed to make space exploration a reality. We americans are faced with a serious dillema. If we have kerry space will be neglected. If we have bush our country will be neglected. On top of that, bush will not cooperate with other nations. a catch 22 it seems, eh?
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
From the Article.. "In order to create a craft capable of orbiting in space for five days, scientists say they have been trying to reduce weight and improve the performance of onboad instrumentation."
The funny part is... the US sent men to the moon in the late 60's and the entire spacecraft had less computer power then a 486 computer... And they need to improve current technology???
Just goes to show, with todays technology, we sometimes forget we can simplify things.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Is happy to note they may be able to get manned craft into space as early as late next year
Nope.
Sounds to me like China's space program is really going well and also that China is very much a potential super power - time will tell.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I'm getting scared.
:)
Scared?? What is their to be scared of?? China is the mightiest nation on earth. They have a standing army larger than the population of the United States. By 2050, if we are still around, you won't have anything to worry about. In fact you'll be happy in your new job that was outsourced from "the mainland" to save China money
Currently, the International Space Station consists of pretty much every spacefaring nation on Earth, with the exception of China... due to US uncertainty over its motives. So China is planning to go its own way, build its own station, etc.
I don't know about you, but as a Chinese living in the USA, I would really like for China to join the ISS -- we don't need another Cold War style space race, and cooperation with the world will, I believe, lead to greater transparency and scrutiny of China's space program anyhow.
Indeed, it's absurd that China is currently one of only two nations with a operational manned spaceflight capability, but isn't allowed to join the ISS -- when the ISS is suffering from major logistical resupply problems due to the grounding of the shuttle.
China has, for years, been on a path from isolation back in the 1950s and 1960s, to being a part of the world community in many ways. The US needs to ditch its outdated paranoia, or else the other nations (Russia, EU, etc) need to grow some balls and admit China into the consortium for the benefit of all sides concerned.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
POTENTIAL superpower?!? You'd better hope they don't decide to provide proof of it...
Someone post some stats about China's military numbers and their nuclear arsenal...I'm too lazy to google...
No I'm not...2.5 million in the military, first successful nuclear test, 1964, hydrogen in 1967....OK they're #5 among the main nuclear powers, but that's still ~120 nuclear missles can do enough damage to consider them pretty powerful.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
Five way, if you count private enterprise separately. Six if you count the ESA separately as well.
I wonder if the current partners will try and bring China on board the space station project? It would probably be comforting to know there was another party that could reach it if the US and Russia (at the same time) were rendered unable to.
Well, so long as no one is trying to render anyone else unable to, it's comforting.
Well, right now, there are no astronauts, only Taikonauts or cosmonauts, so perhaps we should retire astronaut instead : )
Something is always better than nothing.
Ever since the space shuttle disaster, and the bankrupt of Russia, both the Americans and Russians are stuck with the ultra-expensive ISS.
The Chinese are doing something, and they ought to be congratulated.
If the Indians can do it earlier than the Chinese, so much the better. I also heard that Brazil also has something under development.
How about the Europeans ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Why are you even scared - so what if China is developing fast, has 1/6 the world population, you can just be thankful (if you like) that for the last few millenia they have been content stuck behind a wall.
:-) hahahahahahahahhaha laugh. Oh read Neuromancer and see for yourself the Asian overtones that sweep the entire future worlds.
I think China is interesting, they will grow rapidly, with ever increasing ties into Japan-tech and don't forget a little sporting event in 2008 that will wake up most of the western world to how great China is.
I wouldn't think for one moment China wants to barrage the US with bombs, I think barraging them with LCD's, Chips and assorted gadgetry will suffice.
Look what happened ot Japan after 2 nuclear bombs. They didn't reinvest into thier army, but in developing technology.
If in 4 years I here rhetorical war mongering amongst a (hopefully not, why not go and vote today?) Bush administration I will wonder what country they will hype up as a threat to world security in order to keep their little club in power.
You see, we have no right being scared, trying to hold back other countries. You cannot be anti-monopolistic and worry about China at the same time.
Fact: China will become a (the) world super power within 40 years, and export technology, culture and politics around the world.
I for one welcome our Chinese overlords...
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Becuase US military planners don't think China will just build more misiles?
Not only that, but 24 - even 120 - is an incredibly small number of nuclear weapons for a country as big as China. The US, for comparison, has thousands (~10,000, if I recall correctly - it's been a while)
China's nuclear arsenal is about as good of an example of a "deterrant arsenal" as you can get. And, barring a drastic change in military strategy, if the US tries a "try to break their budget through a big military buildup" strategy, it's only going to break our own budget.
POTUS Witch Hunt tracker: 75 charges filed against 19 witches, 4 witches cooperating and 5 witches have pled guilty.
China launched its first manned satellite in 2003, 40 years after the first manned US satellite. But being 40 years later isn't the same as being 40 years behind, because US space technology stood still, or actually declined, during some of that time. For example, NASA no longer has the technology to send people to the Moon and bring them back - although it could, and did, 30 years ago. Current "state of the art" in US manned launchers is the Shuttle, developed more than 20 years ago. China is probably no more than 5 years behind. So if the US continues to stand still, China could overtake the US in space capability within 5 years.
In my opinion, the reason for the word taikonaut to exist is because it carries a Chinese background. You can say "Chinese astronaut", but it's too long and people don't like it when they can use one word. Also, "Chinese astronaut" could be confused with Chinese-American astronauts like Dr Leroy Chiaohttp://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/chiao.h tml.
As a Chinese speaker, I'm not satisfied with the word "taikonauts" either. It sounds wierd to a Chinese ear, especially when pronounced by a non-native English speaker like myself. But it is not possilbe to let the western people read Chinese characters. Even the original pinyin form "taikongren" would cause trouble to most English speakers. Since now people are using it more and more, I can only accept it. That's the way languages evolve.
Language is a living thing. An lively language like English can never be pure. If you want a pure language, there is Latin. But I'm afraid few nowadays know how to pronounce it. During the past centuries, English has absorbed words from Latin, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and many other languages to accommondate ideas from different cultures as well as the new things happening everyday. It can't be perfect in translating these ideas, but certainly it has so far done a good job.
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
The People's Republic of China is something more than a regional power and something less than a world power. It doesn't rate enough to be called a superpower.
In order to be considered a world power you need to be able to project your influence around the entire world, reguardless of distance from your borders. In general, you can think of "influence" as being one of three forms: economic, political and military. (Yes, they're all related, but I'm simplifying here.)
It's pretty much accepted that the PRC is an influence on economies around the world. Check. Now, about those other two...
Politically, the PRC has difficulty influencing what happens in the government on the otherside of the Staights of Taiwan, let alone the government of, say, Namibia (a random example where random sampling shouldn't matter). Internationally, the PRC has gained some notoriety for it's "We're not the USA" stance (and a lot of that come from the near-accident of a permanent seat in the UN Security Council), but otherwise the government of the PRC isn't idolized by many and few see a Beijing-style national government as something worth emulating. The only countries in China's own region that are emulating its government are the ones that conquered by force of arms. Which brings us to the next area...
You mention "2.5 million in the military," but you seem to be relying on an Eighteenth Century viewpoint that the number of soldiers is the most important aspect, discounting advantages of both technology and (perhaps more importantly) Western-style military doctrine. If we're to look at the various wars the PRC has been involved in since WWII, those 2.5 million people will fight as a mob of 2.5 million people. A Western-style army will instead fight as squads, platoons, companies, batallions and so forth, operating as cohesive, coordinated units. Historical examples ranging from Theropylae through the Zulu uprsing and through PRC's own example of throwing the Peoples' Liberation Army against US forces in Korea have shown that regimentation trumps mobs.
Throw in Beijing's nasty habit of promoting loyalty over merit, the general disdain offers have for the enlisted and NCOs because of it, and the gross lack of discipline a certain Chinese pilot showed in early 2001 (who was allowed to hot dog with a US EP-3 over a series of weeks and months until his stunts finally got him killed), and you have a sorry state of affairs for the PLA in any serious engagement.
But, still those 2.5 million might mean something if they could get anywhere; power is pretty useless if you can't project it, and the Peoples' Liberation Army Navy would have difficulty mounting a cross-straights offensive (even without the presence of the US Seventh Fleet), let alone being able to do it in the North Atlantic. In the Northwest Pacific, China has difficulty competing with other regional military powers like South Korea and Australia. I'd wager the UK (a world power without being a superpower) still has a bigger influence in the area's waters than China.
And the Chinese have been having more problems figuring out nuclear propulsion than the French.
Speaking of "nukular," you mention their nuclear weapons. Their 300+ warheads puts them in a very distance third behind the thousands posessed by Russia and China each. It puts China in the same neighborhood as France and the UK. But I'd say they're more akin to France than the UK because, like France, the Chinese have no real capability to actually "project" that force much beyond its borders. They're "just now" getting into the whole manned spaceflight gig, which means they're also "just now" getting into the whole intercontinental missile thing. Of those 300-some warheads, perhaps only two or three dozen could reach much beyond Okinawa or the Philippines. The extreme Aleutians might be in trouble, but nobody in Fairbanks or Honolulu (let alone San Francisco or New York) needs to loose sleep over Chinese missiles. Chinese warheads and Chinese missiles were intended for Japan, the Soviet Far East and India.
Personally, I'd say calling PRC a "potential superpower" is pretty generous.
Don't flatter yourself so much. China invented rocketry 5000 years ago. Germany brought it along in the 1930's. Dr.Von Braun came to the US and gave the US a whole lot of technology (I don't seem to recall anyone thanking Germany lately). That a slip of technology may or may not have been given hardly makes a difference. There are just over 1 billion Chinese with thousands of universities. Do you expect they are all dumb? At least 5000000 Chinese hold advanced degrees. You can argue that their education isn't the same as that in the west. I agree. Theirs is likely far superior. Any slip of information is going to be something that someone else already came up with, or was 99% already built. No country has a monopoly on information, knowledge or the power to create new ideas. Deal with it!