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Chinese Astronauts Complete First Spacewalk
As_I_Please writes "At 8:40AM (GMT) this morning, Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang successfully spent 18 minutes in a tethered spacewalk outside the spacecraft Shenzhou 7. This is an important step in China's goal of building an orbiting space station and sending astronauts to the moon."
Forgive my skepticism, but this is exactly the sort of thing that China commonly lies about.
If true, it is a wonderous and stunning achievement, and they have my utpost respect and admiration.
However... again, this is exactly the sort of thing that China lies about.
Are there any sources of information on the validity of this that aren't controlled by the Chinese government, that verify their claims?
Why are all posts so anti-chinese?
Because they're an authoritarian government that lies all the time?
This is a great step forward, not only for china, but for all of humankind.
This is almost old hat for Russian and American astronauts (or cosmonauts or whatever). Any country could work with those two space programs and complete a space walk on their own. I wouldn't be surprised if the ESA has already done this as well and I just haven't heard of it. In other words, the third or fourth country doing this isn't a great step forward for all humankind, it's one more country catching up to where other countries were decades ago.
In addition, China's extra space capacity isn't a good thing. Space so far has been nothing but a wagging match between Russia and the US, it's been relatively free of military conflict. If we want space to become something other than a place to conduct science and take some pictures, then increasing China's space capabilities is a great way to start.
I'm Chinese. Guess what? Most people here have same attitude as world old empire: British and even old China empire. Failing but not realizing. I hope all of you hold this attitude. We'll have much better chance to success. so happy.