China puts first man in space.

SkepticOne · 15-10-2003 6:07am #1

BBC story here.

A Long March 2F rocket blasted off from the Gobi desert launch pad at 0900 (0100GMT), and the Shenzhou V spacecraft was orbiting Earth 10 minutes later.

The craft, carrying a single astronaut Yang Liwei, is expected to orbit 14 times, returning to Earth in about 21 hours' time.

Could this be the start of a new space race?

Sparks · 15-10-2003 9:24am

Hopefully. But the Chinese seem set on doing things the right way rather than sprinting to the moon and then going home again.

Plus, their vehicle is based on the best system yet developed rather than that god-awful engineering nightmare that is the Shuttle, so they do have a decent chance.

Lucutus · 15-10-2003 12:49pm

Commies in space? The US of A won't like that.

Sparks · 15-10-2003 12:52pm

Originally posted by Lucutus
Commies in space?

Don't you mean "commies in space again"?

The US of A won't like that.

Well, they already have officals advocating a policy of denying NEO to other nations...

albertw · 15-10-2003 1:11pm

Originally posted by Sparks
Well, they already have officals advocating a policy of denying NEO to other nations...

www.globalsecurity.org has had some very interesting peices on the Chinese threat of late. Today the media at large seems to be taking a more positive take on the story than the `poor chinese wasting money with old soviet technology doing what the US did 40 years ago` tone of the last few days.

Anyway, before I decend into a rant heres the good news:

Heavens-above.com have the orbit elements
http://www.heavens-above.com/orbitdisplay.asp?satid=28043

The bad news:
No pass is visible from Ireland.

Cheers,
~Al
--
www.irishastronomy.org

mike65 · 15-10-2003 1:24pm

I cant help but wonder what the point is...national prestige is all well and good but sending a man to the moon now is surely without merit, still it'll give the Americans something to think about!

Mike.

Capt'n Midnight · 15-10-2003 1:44pm

eh ? - he is not going to the moon

And re 40 year old technology - that is an insult to the Russians - they still send people into orbit in what is basically an early 1950's ICBM - BECAUSE IT WORKS.

If you do a cost benefit analysis of changing from a the well understood soyuz module (with lots of reliability statistics & practical experiance) to a new untested system, you will probably find that you would need to launch quite a number of them before you can have any significant condifence it will work as expected, and then there are the development costs and the hidden gotcha's ...

In america they have a saying "if it works, it's obsolete"

Anyway what possible use could one of the world's largest countries, which needs foreign investment have with space ?
Don't forget if the Chinese had developed their mobile phone system 5 years earlier, us europeans probably would not use GSM ...

mike65 · 15-10-2003 1:55pm

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight
eh ? - he is not going to the moon

Sorry, I should have mentioned that they intend to have a manned mission to the moon within 10 years.

Mike.

Sparks · 15-10-2003 1:57pm

Actually, it's not so much that it works as the fact that it's the safest and most reliable vehicle that currently exists. The shuttle is a deathtrap by comparison...

albertw · 15-10-2003 1:59pm

Anyway what possible use could one of the world's largest countries, which needs foreign investment have with space ?

They have now shown that they are confident enough in their space program to put a human up with it. To foreign investors this shows that they are capable of putting commercial satellites up safley also, probably undercutting NASA , the Russians and the ESA (who apparently help the Chinese national space agency out quite a bit).

Cheers,
~Al
--
Irish Federation of Astronomical Societies
www.irishastronomy.org

Sparks · 15-10-2003 2:19pm

The US are already unhappy with the Chinese habit of launching satellites for half the cost of a NASA or ESA launch, and that was before the manned program got underway. Thing to remember is that under the pre-95 US-China lauch agreement, the chinese could only lauch 7 satellites in five years, so the apparent lack of a program prior to '95 is an artifically created perception.

On the other hand, the Chinese have approached the US about becoming major partners in the ISS.

So prior to their current crazyness, the US wouldn't necessarily have found the chinese program a threat. Now though...

Sarky · 15-10-2003 5:45pm

Perhaps if the US had used a pencil like the Russians, instead of spending millions researching a biro that would work in zero-gravity, they might have made enough progress by now not to worry.

Capt'n Midnight · 15-10-2003 6:12pm

I love that story about the pen

Agent Smith · 15-10-2003 6:28pm

China puts first man in space.

fair fucI(s to them....

Sparks · 15-10-2003 6:43pm

That story about the pen's an urban legend guys. Firstoff, NASA didn't develop the space pen, that was a private company that did so without a tender. NASA just buys them. And it buys them for good reason - break the nib of the pencil in orbit and you've got a small sharp piece of graphite floating about looking for an eye to lodge in or some sensitive piece of equipment to foul up.

Now had NASA used common engineering sense in the 70s and not thrown away everything they learnt from apollo, right down to tools, dies, jigs and blueprints for the Saturn V and then built the biggest engineering nightmare in the history of the space industry (which is also now the most dangerous vehicle in the history of the space industry), then they'd be further along than they are right now.

China puts first man in space.

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