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

How many years after the first asian.

[ron_ivi]

Of course we also remember that the first asian astronaut flew in space over 25 years ago. ( July 23, 1980 Pham Tuan)

Plagiarized?

[ReformedExCon]

The article is about twice the length of the writeup, with most of the content simply cut and pasted into the writeup.

It would be nice to have more information about this. I wonder what China's plans are as to space, and whether their centralized government will be able to make better progress than the American system. Then again, beauracracy is beauracracy, so I don't have high hopes on China getting much further than developing extra-long range rockets.

As Gorbachev said

[panurge]

The Soviet Union could build nukes but it could not build refrigerated trucks so most of its vegetables never made it to market. Centralized systems frequently fail to do important things, or put vast effort into spectacularly stupid things because there is no system of checks and balances. If China deflects its modernisation plans into space exploration, it may just run out of resource and collapse like the Soviet Union did. The Cultural Revolution hardly bodes well as an example of Chinese centralized planning!

Hubble

[SmellsLike]

Would there be any thoughts towards NASA asking China to help out with Hubble? The chinese seem to want to spend money going out into space. Might be worth NASA sharing/selling knowledge. If the main point in the mission is making the citizens feel more nationalistic they may not care to enter any partnerships with other countries though.

Been here before, you know

[panurge]

In the 20s and the 30s useful idiots told everybody how the Soviet Union was unstoppable and unbeatable, and how its tremendous resources and central planning would enable it to overtake the rest of the world. As Krushchev told the US, we will attend your funeral...almost correct, just the wrong way round.
Chinese success stories? Taiwan - er, covertly US supported, not part of Chinese empire yet. Hong Kong - er, UK administered free market until very recently. Shanghai - interesting history, not really part of mainland Chinese economy. Beijing - well, I'd better not give identifiable information about contacts there, but don't try running a business without regular "donations" to the local party official.
The giant Chinese economy? The one that's being funded by US indebtedness. The Chinese economic boom is already starting to strangle itself because they are not producing the necessary materials and resources themselves, so the price of oil, steel, copper and concrete has been rising rapidly. Unlike the former Soviet Union, which actually produced huge excesses of raw materials, the Chinese boom is credit and resource constrained. And all the investors are afraid to say so for fear of a lack of business confidence (i.e. exposure to reality.)
I'm probably wrong, as about a lot of things, but to my mind the axis to watch is Russia/India. Russia has the resources. India has the people and the education. India also has a huge business presence in England which gives them access to the EU. Russia and India go back a long way together (the only successful communist governments in the world were in India.) Unless the US deliberately moves its economic and military power to support China, in an effort to stave off economic collapse, I know where I'd invest.