China Launches Two Astronauts Into Space

DIY News writes to tell us that China has launched their second manned space mission just two years after becoming only the third nation to launch a human into orbit. Astronauts Fei Julong and Nie Haisheng took off Wednesday at 9:00 pm EST (0100 GMT) for a mission that could last up to five days.

Comments

Such a shame

[QuantumG]

that China is only interested in Space as a prestige project. Didn't they get the memo? Private citizens are launching themselves into space. Anyone with 20 million to spare can go hang out on the space station. It's hardly prestigous for a country that contains the majority of the world's population to acheive something that private citizens of other countries can beat. Of course, if China was to send a manned mission to the Moon that actually acheived something (like returning a sample of the polar ice or mining a few kilograms of precious metals) that would be prestigous!