Slashdot Mirror
China Enters Space
Almost everybody sent it: "China successfully launches and retrieves its first unmanned spacecraft, moving it a step closer to becoming the third nation to send astronauts into space..." BBC story - SpaceViews story - official press release from China Daily.
We all know China's previous record.
*Ahem*.. Excuse me, but which country has actually droopped nukes on people? Which country is constantly bombing other sovereign nations with neither declaring war nor consulting the U.N.? China threatens Taiwan with weapons, but has it actually attacked them?
Before you get scared that China is going to attack other countries, look at the countries that are ALREADY attacking other countries!
Not true. US immigration policies haven't stopped admitting poor people, in fact, compared to most other developed nations we're one of the worse (or best, depending on your perspective) in that regard. If anything, the US needs to tighten them up more. Other countries such as Canada atleast have a system in place where immigrants tend to be educated and mobile (or atleast have a good track record of success). Furthermore, when it comes to engineers and what not, we restrict them in the name of protectionism--very stupid. Damn few of our immigrants have much in the way of skills, it's a shame.
The amount of xenophobia here amazes me. It seems that everytime we have an article on any advance in China, we have Slasdotters making chittering little noises that amount to "Oh no, are they going to kill us now?"
China has replaced the Soviet Union as the big bad wolf in American eyes, and when supposedly rational Slashdotters take part in the fear mongering, it's easy to see how movements like McCarthyism arose in America.
I wonder if China started planning trips to Mars would the US's space program try to speed things up on it's own planning? Maybe end up starting another space race type thing?
Just a thought.
Eric Anderson
And dont forget gunpowder, guess what the Chinese used it for? Firecrackers. The europeans came up with the idea of using it to fire a projectile.
Actually, you're quite wrong. The chinese invented rocketry for the purpose of sieging castles. They were firing explosive rockets over city walls long before Europeans even had cannons.
And as you may know, it took European inventiveness to put a practical use to paper, i.e. the printing press.
Actually, iirc, movable type printing was invented long before Gutenberg in the East as well. It's just that with Gutenberg, it really took off.
But you're right (sort of) when you allude to the fact that the Chinese's biggest fault was in being too self-congratulatory and unaccepting of outsiders because they were "just barbarians". The ancient Greeks had a similar attitude and they likewise fell.
But you know what? After all the crap China went through from European abuse in the 19th and early 20th Century, it learned its lesson. China now is more eager to assimilate other cultures than almost any other place.
And you know who's becoming really arrogant and unaccepting of others (always thinking they're the best)? The US.
If history taught us anything, that's going to be a problem for the US...
Einstein did NOT develop the Atom bomb. You might say he sparked it, and layed __some_ of the fundamental groundwork. Though the development of the Atom bomb was probably inevitable, the Manhattan project was something special. The source of the intellect (e.g., Jewish Germans during WWII) is of little relevance; it is the forces that fostered the development that sets us apart.
I'm not convinced that societies/government, such as China and the USSR, are capable of such fundamental leaps in the scale of the manhattan project. In fact, The USSR did, after all, feel the need to steal our technology. Very little technological advancement came out of the USSR in its prime. The same can be said for China of yesterday. However, I believe China is making fundamental changes towards a more free and open society and towards capitalism, as they approach this, they will become the next superpower.
Its really disturbing to see that you Americans think that China is *always* up to no good. Its so hypocritical that a nation that uses its power to its own benefit (and no one elses) to say that China is now doing something wrong by putting something in space.
I live in Hong Kong, and sometimes you people amaze me by how narrow-minded you are.
You guys need to wake up from the American dream and face the reality of the real world.
Go ahead, moderate me down, but you all know its true.
Intriguing. They embrace Linux as their official OS, and shortly after, they are able to enter space.
* The Soviet Union's status as a nuclear superpower was largely due to espionage. Fuchs, Rosenberg, and other sympathizers funneled information including plans for atomic devices to the NKVD; without this information, they would have been hard pressed to come close to the US.
* Much of the initial rocketry research was done by Nazi scientists working on the V series weapons; if memory serves, a few ended up in the States as researchers instead of war prisoners. That's about as far from the Communist ideal as you can get.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.