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China Plans 5-day Manned Space Mission

Posted by timothy on from the remember-the-board-games dept.

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.

9 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Made in China... by Dzimas · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm getting scared. TVs, computers, LCD displays, mp3 players, and nearly every other kind of high tech device is made in China. Now they're leading the "new wave" into space.

    Meanwhile in North America, we've perfected manufacture of the double bacon cheeseburger. Gulp.

    1. Re:Made in China... by divide+overflow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > They should pay Bill Clinton a royalty. His administration made their recent progress possible.

      Hardly. Credit or blame goes to 1) Hughes Electronics Corp. and Boeing Satellite Systems for unlawfully transferring rocket and satellite data to China and 2) Richard Nixon for agreeing to expand political and economic ties with China back in 1972.

    2. Re:Made in China... by ducomputergeek · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Nah, now its a race between China vs. Rutan to see who can put a man in space longer. So far China's ahead, but Rutan got a man in space twice in 2 weeks on a USD 25M budget. Now that's impressive even if it was just sub-orbital. Also proves that Dual Stage to Orbit vs. NASA's Single Stage to Orbit pipe dream is more cost effective.

      --
      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  2. life support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    they will remain in orbit for five days, although their craft could support them for up to one week.

    wow, IMO that's a pretty a small buffer! i would add more to accomodate for any miscalculations or if they must stay up for londer for whatever reason.

  3. Re:I'm sorry... by dwgranth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    fair enough... seeing that the US is thinking of shutting down the shuttle missions soon, and it sending astronauts by way of the Russian rockets.. maybe china will come out on top after all in the next round of the space race (Man on mars??)

  4. Re:Please, no more "taikonauts"! by red+floyd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry, but the word "Cosmonaut" was there first.

    The first man in space was Russian.

    --
    The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
  5. 486 by vlad_petric · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It was actually much less than that (probably comparable to a Z80). 486 would have been PFM (pure magik) for those times.

    FYI: even today, you can't send more than a 486 in orbit, mostly because of feature sizes. The smaller the feature size, the easier for cosmic radiation to screw things up.

    --

    The Raven

  6. So now that China has money to put men in space... by character_assassin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... does this mean that we can stop sending them economic aid? (http://www.tibet.ca/en/wtnarchive/2004/4/6_5.html )

    --

    If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
  7. Re:At least somebody is doing something by Urkki · · Score: 3, Interesting
    • And to say that we can't let people die in large numbers in the space progra 'for political reasons' says more about you as a person than it does about those in charge of space programs, fortunately. I think you need to take a close look at sorting out your priorities if you think that human life - or any life - is that cheap.

    We let people die in various ways and huge numbers all the time... The economic choices we make help millions to die in 3rd world. The car industry makes thousands of people (both drivers, passengers and pedestrians) die every year. Pollution causes many many unncessary deaths every year. And so on.

    The point is, whatever human activity, people die! Can't stop it, fact of life.

    So the question becomes, how many people are allowed to die, what is the acceptable risk per person. And if you say "no death is acceptable" then I sure hope you for example don't drive a car, since a lot of people kill other people with their cars every day, and only way it can be stopped is to stop driving cars completely.

    If we want to progress science and technology, we have to accept higher rate of deaths than is acceptable in "normal life". If we don't, we can as well give up and let those willing to take the risks to reap the rewards as well.