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

Re:No Borders in Space

[erlenic]

I agree. I remember when they sent their first guy up there, I saw a poll on cnn.com. The question was: "Do you fear that China sending someone into space will start another space race?" I wanted to answer: "No, I'm not afraid it does, I hope it does."

Re:Who cares?

[brandido]

I believe the cooperation between the Chinese and the Russian space programs stopped in the 60s. And you are correct, their manned capsule is based on the Soyuz. Even if their launches were just lauches of China built Soyuz, this would still be a significant accomplishment, as it would demostrate their ability to maintain an self-sufficient branch of safe manned space exploration, especially given that the US is currently demostrating an inability to maintain a such a program (the Soyuz has a much better track record than the shuttle, and as such, with the CEV we are actually moving towards something that is more like the Soyuz than the shuttle).

However, it is more than that - the Chinese are doing more than just maintaining the designs that they Russians shared with them in the 60s - they are developing and refining and updating those designs, so that it represents a fully independent developing branch of space travel. It is essentially expanding the market of Manned space travel, so that the opportunity to get into space is not limited to two countries.

Hopefully the time comes soon when a private entity such as SpaceX can provide for access to space separate from government institutions, but until that time, I am happy to see more entries onto the space stage.