Only the third nation on earth to single-handedly launch people into space (in 2003), the Chinese continue their successful space program this week with an attempted space-walk mission. You can read about this story all over the net, but I link here to an article in the New York Times. Another impressive technological feat from a part of the world that brought us the compass, gunpowder and printing.
September 26, 2008 at 1:27 pm |
Did you read this story from earlier this year about the Chinese students who were caught sending space secrets back home to the Chinese government?
September 27, 2008 at 10:26 am |
Isis: Interesting. There was another recent incident involving a Chinese physicist who has been teaching in the US most of his career questioned by the FBI for similar indiscretions. Standard procedure, really. The US space program was jump started by old Nazi scientists after World War II. Thank you, Wernher von Braun.
September 27, 2008 at 10:54 am |
1. Thank you for editing that…
2. Don’t you think there is something ironic about fighting for infamy in space…Most of us think of space as this incredibly vast, timeless, gravityless, indescribable, larger than life, incomprehensible…thing. Yet our fools-rush-in governments plant spies and steal secrets to fight over who gets credit for exploring more or better or faster…LUDICROUS. Is there no end to our self-absorption?…talk about not seeing beyond the end of your nose…
September 27, 2008 at 10:59 am |
1. You’re welcome. I’m uptight that way. :)
2. Space programs are the ultimate expression of state-based behavior. Grand plans of conquest and exploration that amount, in the larger scheme of things, to not a hell of a lot. And let’s not forget the symbolism — rockets and missiles jetting out into the unknown. Boys with their toys, ya know?