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."

Comments

Re:Plagiarized?

[jandersen]

The thing about working in a centralised system is that they can seriously get their act together and do things. The western world is ripe with examples of what happens when you work in a free market and have to find a consesus, ideally through competing in the said market.

Look at the old Soviet Union; yes, they were governed by spectacularly stupid men, but bigods they could get their act together and DO things on a huge scale. And the Chinese can too, plus they are seriously clever. If they want to go to the Moon or Mars and establish a colony, then that is what they will, I'm sure. And they will probably get there before Bush & Co. can get their brains into first gear.

Centralized

[Mark_MF-WN]

The US isn't really a free-market state at all. There's a remarkable amount of centralized control -- just like in every western nation. The US is just a capable of huge projects. Just look at the US highway system (the envy of large spacious nations everywhere, particularly those nations that contain the transcanada highway), the Apollo missions, the ridiculous number of space probes Nasa launches, or the 10 million or so troops that the US pulled together to send to the second world war. None of those things would be possible in truly capitalist state. The US is far more socialistic than they give themselves credit for.

How many countries would just rebuild a destroyed city? Or for that matter, rebuild destroyed nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Japan and Germany? It takes enormous centralized wealth and control to do these things. The big advantage of the US is that it allows a large sphere of free economic activity that generates wealth and talent, which are then available for ultra-projects.

Enough of the BS

[marlinSpike]

Every time there's a story about China or India, I open the comments sections prepared for all the jingos and ethnocentric ignoramuses who unfortunately make the dicussion into a bar-room brawl.

In the post cold-war and freer-trade era, there are few zero-sum games around, but apparently someone hasn't told some folk on here that the world has moved far beyond them.

Re:Twisted Priority

[grumpyman]

Dude, talking about twisted priorities. Take a look at these figures:

Chinese space exploration budget: ~US$2B
NASA budget: ~US$16B
China population: 1300M
US population: 295M
1 Chinese Citizen's Share: US$1.54
1 US Citizen's Share: US$54.24
1:35
China GDP per capita: US$5600
US GDP per capita: US$40100
1:7

China GDP: 7.26T
US GDP: 11.75T

"Obsolete equipments"? Have you worked in the NASA building rockets and spyed in the Chinese space agency? When Chinese goverment got something working it's ALWAYS because of a draconian government (so is when something goes terribly wrong). Dude, US government is taking effectively 5 times more than the chinese government for your space program.

"...Mars shot and be done with"? Not before the Republican wins again and they boost the budget by 10 times, not counting the additional number of years.

"a draconian government mandate at the back of its ten millions of poor destitute citizenry". In US, we have Bush and 37M people in poverty.