A Potato Returns to Space
Nearly half a century after Mao Zedong said that China couldn't even put a potato in space, the PRC is preparing to launch its second manned mission in two years. The first manned flight took place in October 2003.
This time China is sending up two astronauts (or cosmonauts for the ex-Soviets amongst us). They are set for takeoff on Wednesday, and will stay in orbit for a few days to conduct some scientific experiments.
What concerns me is that they said that the experiments will not be on seeds, which has been the area of specialization for China. Quoting Mr. Wang Yongzhi, chief designer of China's manned spaceflight program, he said that China would carry out: "scientific experiments with human participation in its real sense".
Now that scares me! I think we should have UN inspectors check for political prisoners tied up in the trunk of the space rocket.
Seriously though, this shows how more rapidly the Chinese space program is growing in comparison to the US. In the same time that China is sending its second manned flight, we have managed to send up one shuttle mission that has resulted in the grounding of our entire shuttle fleet. That is very sad, and foreboding of things to come in relationship to American power when compared to China.
This time China is sending up two astronauts (or cosmonauts for the ex-Soviets amongst us). They are set for takeoff on Wednesday, and will stay in orbit for a few days to conduct some scientific experiments.
What concerns me is that they said that the experiments will not be on seeds, which has been the area of specialization for China. Quoting Mr. Wang Yongzhi, chief designer of China's manned spaceflight program, he said that China would carry out: "scientific experiments with human participation in its real sense".
Now that scares me! I think we should have UN inspectors check for political prisoners tied up in the trunk of the space rocket.
Seriously though, this shows how more rapidly the Chinese space program is growing in comparison to the US. In the same time that China is sending its second manned flight, we have managed to send up one shuttle mission that has resulted in the grounding of our entire shuttle fleet. That is very sad, and foreboding of things to come in relationship to American power when compared to China.
posted by Aleksandr at 10:30 PM
2 Comments:
Well there was a point in the ‘60’s when all as a country decided that is enough let’s stop trying and see if we can all get comfortable and fat and that is what we did.
I am less concerned with what they are doing in space (the usefulness of that kind of research is usually overblown) and more concerned with what they are learning about laucher technology.
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