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China Launches Two Astronauts Into Space

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the the-more-the-merrier dept.

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.

6 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Such a shame by ravenspear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    Correction, private citizens can pay a government (Russia) to launch them into space. They cannot do it by themselves. Only two governments currently have the capability. China being only the third to do it puts them in an elite group. It may not be a significant achievement by today's measure of technology, but it is certainly nontrivial.

  2. No Borders in Space by ndansmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nationalism be damned, go China! I am honestly very excited for space flight, no matter who is doing it.

  3. Where is this next gen vehical? by raptor_87 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All of the major companies (and some of the smaller ones) are going with expendable launchers. (Okay, so SpaceLaunch can reuse the L1011 that they drom the rockets from, but that's it.)

    SpaceShip2 is just SpaceShip1 with more passengers, more safety(?), and a bit more downrange capability.

    How far did any of the other X-Prize contestents get? I understand that no one else was anywhere near a manned attempt as of fall 2004.

  4. Food Would Be Nice ? ? by deathCon4 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I am all for Space Exploration, but a country like China needs to focus its money on feeding and clothing its population first. Millions are homeless and have no chance at a better life. People need to straighten out their priorities.

  5. Who cares? by mschaffer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    China's hardware is obviously based upon the old Soviet Soyuz space hardware. (It may even be a licensed copy.) So, China has made theirs a little bit bigger---big deal. At least they probably got bargain pricing on the technology. (Besides, the Soyuz strongly resembles the hardware and methodology proposed by General Electric in thier failed bid for NASA's Apollo program.)

    So, who cares? A country like China should be able to afford and implement these older technologies if they want to spend the money and time. If this project is properly funded and managed there is no excuse for them not to succeed.

  6. They feed their people by bluGill · · Score: 2, Insightful

    China doesn't have a problem feeding its people. Well The food isn't what you and I would like to eat, but it is healthy. (And from what I can tell the Chinese prefer it to what we eat, so it is a matter of personal taste)

    The US is buying a lot of 'junk' from China - China is running a trade surplus. If China has a problem with feeding it's people it could afford to buy food from the US where crops are burned in the field because it isn't worth the cost to harvest them.

    The only countries that have starvation issues are countries where the government is actively starving the people, or where war has destroyed the crops, and relief can't get through.

    Note that I'm not saying China has no problems, but the problems are not significant in regards to feeding people.