Slashdot Mirror
China's Second Manned Space Flight
desert island writes "As if to coincide with Russia's space tourist, Beijing News speculated that China's second manned space launch will occur after the October 1-7 holiday. The spacecraft Shenzhou VI, with two astronauts, will be launched from the Jiuquan Space Launch Center in northwest China's Gansu province and will last 119 hours." From the article: "The mission will differ markedly from China's first manned space voyage, the Shenzhou V, which was a solo flight that lasted 21 hours in October 2003. China's space program is still shrouded in secrecy with little known about events until several days before they happen. However since the success of the first manned flight, authorities have shown a little more transparency."
It staggers my mind to watch the Chinese enter (however belately) into the space race with such obsolete equipments.
India had ambition but had to scale it back due to pragmatism (and a wise move at this).
Chinese however is surely to make this long moon-shot works because its such a draconian government mandate at the back of its ten millions of poor destitute citizenry (at least 40% at last count). Why does this remind me of U.S.S.R. back in the 80s? USA merely (oops, nearly) drove them broke with Reagan at the helm touting his Star Wars pitch.
As for Red China, such lofty goals by its forward/backward parity of a Taoist (no, make that Maoist) society. At least, NASA has pragmatic mechanism built-in (via congressional funding) whose vote is carried by its middle-class!
Just break the Chinese camel's back with a Mars shot and be done with.