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Lifer
- Oct 24, 2000
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October 15, 2003
China's First Astronaut Returns to Earth
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JIUQUAN, China -- China's first astronaut in space returned safely to Earth on Thursday when his craft touched down on time and as planned after 21 hours in orbit, the government said. China's mission control declared the country's landmark debut flight "a success."
The craft carrying Yang Liwei touched down on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in northern China as planned at dawn Thursday, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Minutes later, he emerged from the capsule and waved at rescuers, according to images broadcast by state television.
"The landing is successful," a China Central Television correspondent said. The station released an image of the capsule. The country's premier immediately spoke to Lt. Col Yang Liwei and offered his congratulations.
Shenzhou 5 landed at 6:28 a.m., the government said.
The government said his condition was "good," and the Web site Sina.com said he would undergo an immediate physical exam.
The landing came after a 21-hour mission in which Shenzhou 5 orbited the Earth 14 times. Though the government has been very secretive about its space program, it offered frequent glimpses of Yang throughout the trip and repeatedly said everything was going fine.
The completion of the mission was the crowning achievement of an 11-year, military-linked manned space program promoted as a symbol of national prestige both at home and abroad.
Helicopters and trucks rushed to retrieve Yang. Earlier reports said the astronaut would be armed with knives and possibly a gun to protect himself against wild animals and other threats in the Inner Mongolian grasslands where the ship was to touch down.
Xinhua said the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center sent a message at about 5:35 a.m. Thursday to Shenzhou 5 instructing it to return as planned. Shenzhou 5, shown on a three-dimensional screen in the mission control center, made a gentle turnaround upon receiving the order, Xinhua said.
While in orbit, Yang spoke to his family, telling them it looked "splendid" in space. He also had a conversation with the country's defense minister, unfurled the flags of China and the United Nations and took a nap.
Yang, an astronaut since 1998, was picked for the flight from three finalists. They have trained for years, and the field was narrowed from 14 in recent weeks. His trip came after four test flights, beginning in 1999, of unmanned Shenzhou capsules.
China has had a rocketry program since the 1950s. It launched a manned space program in the 1970s amid the political upheaval of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution but later abandoned it. The program was relaunched in 1992 under the code name Project 921.
The budget for the program is secret, but foreign experts say it totals at least $1 billion -- a major commitment for China, where the average person makes $700 a year.
The Shenzhou, or "Divine Vessel," is based on the three-seat Russian Soyuz capsule, though with extensive modifications.
China's First Astronaut Returns to Earth
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JIUQUAN, China -- China's first astronaut in space returned safely to Earth on Thursday when his craft touched down on time and as planned after 21 hours in orbit, the government said. China's mission control declared the country's landmark debut flight "a success."
The craft carrying Yang Liwei touched down on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in northern China as planned at dawn Thursday, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Minutes later, he emerged from the capsule and waved at rescuers, according to images broadcast by state television.
"The landing is successful," a China Central Television correspondent said. The station released an image of the capsule. The country's premier immediately spoke to Lt. Col Yang Liwei and offered his congratulations.
Shenzhou 5 landed at 6:28 a.m., the government said.
The government said his condition was "good," and the Web site Sina.com said he would undergo an immediate physical exam.
The landing came after a 21-hour mission in which Shenzhou 5 orbited the Earth 14 times. Though the government has been very secretive about its space program, it offered frequent glimpses of Yang throughout the trip and repeatedly said everything was going fine.
The completion of the mission was the crowning achievement of an 11-year, military-linked manned space program promoted as a symbol of national prestige both at home and abroad.
Helicopters and trucks rushed to retrieve Yang. Earlier reports said the astronaut would be armed with knives and possibly a gun to protect himself against wild animals and other threats in the Inner Mongolian grasslands where the ship was to touch down.
Xinhua said the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center sent a message at about 5:35 a.m. Thursday to Shenzhou 5 instructing it to return as planned. Shenzhou 5, shown on a three-dimensional screen in the mission control center, made a gentle turnaround upon receiving the order, Xinhua said.
While in orbit, Yang spoke to his family, telling them it looked "splendid" in space. He also had a conversation with the country's defense minister, unfurled the flags of China and the United Nations and took a nap.
Yang, an astronaut since 1998, was picked for the flight from three finalists. They have trained for years, and the field was narrowed from 14 in recent weeks. His trip came after four test flights, beginning in 1999, of unmanned Shenzhou capsules.
China has had a rocketry program since the 1950s. It launched a manned space program in the 1970s amid the political upheaval of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution but later abandoned it. The program was relaunched in 1992 under the code name Project 921.
The budget for the program is secret, but foreign experts say it totals at least $1 billion -- a major commitment for China, where the average person makes $700 a year.
The Shenzhou, or "Divine Vessel," is based on the three-seat Russian Soyuz capsule, though with extensive modifications.
This shall enlighten the mindless.
---------------------------------
MOSCOW (AFP) Oct 12, 2003
Russia played a significant role in helping China prepare for its first manned space mission, its experts providing training facilities for cosmonauts and the Soyuz spaceship inspiring China's Shenzhu spacecraft, officials said.
"Russian enterprises have been cooperating with China in space construction since the late 1950s," Yury Grigoriev, deputy technical director at the Russian space constructor RKK Energia, told AFP.
"The Chinese have used our experience, but they have not blindly copied our technology," he said.
Preparing the manned flight, scheduled for between October 15 and 17, "the Chinese respected the principle that all the technical equipment must be produced in China," said Grigoriev, responsible for the construction of manned vessels and orbital modules.
Russia offered to sell China a scale model of the Soyuz in 1995, but the Chinese only bought the landing capsule.
"Taking our landing capsule as a basis, they created their own capsule," Grigoriev said. The Chinese spacecraft is "different from the Soyuz."
Where the Soyuz orbital module -- the section manned by cosmonauts during the flight -- burns up in the atmosphere on re-entry after detaching itself from the landing capsule, the Shenzhu's orbital module can continue to fly independently and can be considered as "the predecessor of an orbiting station," he said.
The Chinese "are likely to create their own orbiting station rather than sign on for the International Space Station," he said.
The Star City training centre for cosmonauts near Moscow trained two future Chinese cosmonauts, or "taikonauts," Wu Jie and Li Jinlong, from November 1996 to November 1997, the centre's deputy director Andrei Maiboroda told AFP.
Russian Space Agency spokesman Sergei Gorbunov said that Wu and Li would be the first Chinese men in space.
"We hope everything will go fine and that China will become the third member of the "space pilots' club" after Russia and the United States, he said.
Maiboroda said that Wu had trained as a mission commander and Li as an engineer aboard simulators of the Soyuz spaceship and the Mir space station.
The Chinese studied the theory of space flight, navigation, onboard management systems and space medicine. They also had physical and survival training for extreme environments in case they land in a forest or on water, he said.
The taikonauts passed all of their exams at the center "with good marks," Mairoboda said.
The training course "enabled the Chinese to set up their own training centre" on their return, where around a dozen cosmonauts have been trained, he noted.
Between June and August 1998, a group of four Chinese doctors trained at Star City to learn about space medicine.
"Russia's role in developing the Chinese space medicine sector was considerable. Although Russian aid accelerated the process, they could have managed without it," Russian expert Igor Lisov said.
"The Soviet Union provided ballistic missiles to China in the 1950s, but Sino-Soviet relations then deteriorated and the launch of the first Chinese satellite in 1970 was a purely Chinese success," he explained.
In Beijing, an expert on the Chinese space programme, Brian Harvey, told AFP that although Russia exercised "some influence" on Beijing, China "has developed its space programme very much by itself."
Russian reporters in the Chinese capital said that Russian space officials had asked to be invited to the Shenzhu launch but were turned down.
All rights reserved. ?2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.
interesting, i thought the Chinese space program was based heavily on the russian space program, but looks like they did most of the work themselves. Go China
In the macroview of history, 45 years isn't more than a little over a generation. When you have historical events that usually took places hundreds or even thousands of years apart, people in the future are goign to be looking back at this as a 'race'. But i guess for people that live in the world of 30 seconds attention span, this might not seem like an accomplishment at all.
I cant believe that you are basing the might of a navy on the ammount of ships. That is just plain stupid. The United States has the most powerful navy hands down, any objection is just pointless.
the terroist will steal american partical beams, and its up to china to use helix helicopters and overlord tanks to save the world!
depends on whether you're looking at the entire development of space programs, or just sending a man into space. the former has just begun.
its because they are such bad drivers!!!!!!!! no peripheral vision i suppose
too bad
well good luck with the space missions
no offense intended
too bad
well good luck with the space missions
no offense intended
ming dynasty is one of china's weakest dynasty.
part of the reason why china hasn't grown into a superpower like japan is the way the government works. emperors wanted to keep people stupid so that they could stay in power (something like that). As someone mentioned it already, china emphasized too much on literature and people didn't really care about science until these couple of decades.
and then they had the nationalist government after the ching dynasty collapsed... which was also corrupted and brought tyranny. commies promised change, and they took over. the commies were just as bad(if not worse) as the nationalists. The Nationalists moved to Taiwan and then they ran a pretty oppressive government until the 70s i believe.
it's a big step for china and the world... we as humans could use more resources to explore the universe!
M0oG0oGaiPan
Diamond Member
shiner
Lifer
- Jul 18, 2000
- 17,112
- 1
- 0
Cliff's Note version:
China bought a part or two from Russia, then reverse engineered some systems to mate up with those parts. Impressive I suppose...but not like they developed everything from scratch like the USSR & USA had to do. Glad to see someone else getting into space...but I still don't see this as being anywhere on par with what the USSR & USA did.
I think they still have that, but they upgraded to cloth dragons.
I've been to China and Taiwan, I see big difference.... If ROC had won its civil war, perhaps they would've launched that rocket years ago, with American design instead of USSR influcence.
geez what's up with all the bashing ... many are saying "the tech was copied from the soviets" , "we've done that 45yrs. ago" , blah blah blah ... it's not like they just took the technology and implemented it.
Sending a man into space is not an easy task even if it's been done before. If China made their own PDA or MP3 player 40 years from now, then yeah, what's the big deal. But we're talking about sending someone into space, it's big freakin' accomplishment.
We should give props to China, they're coming up to speed and will give NASA some good competition. It's this competition that will lead to new innovations that at the end everyone benefit from.
Sending a man into space is not an easy task even if it's been done before. If China made their own PDA or MP3 player 40 years from now, then yeah, what's the big deal. But we're talking about sending someone into space, it's big freakin' accomplishment.
We should give props to China, they're coming up to speed and will give NASA some good competition. It's this competition that will lead to new innovations that at the end everyone benefit from.
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