Yay for the Chinese ! They launched their first astronaut today. With any luck this will encourage a growth in the space industry worldwide.
Err…I can’t think of anything else to say yet.
India is next. It shows that technology is diffused to other people and is adapted.
Yeah…
I couldn’t agree more…
It was about time…
Because it seems that the lack of serious competition, had slowed things down…
I wish that we’ll get more “players” on the space scene, now…
cree : I know India has a goal to launch a man in space but how well is their program progressing ?
I hear China wants to have more co-operation between there’s and India’s space program - that ought to speed things up. (but India would seem to have other problems to sort out before getting a space program up and running)
For the lack of competitors, I think this may all be about to change in the next two years. Personally I’m rooting for Steve Bennet of Starchaser Industries to win the X-prize (www.starchaser.co.uk) - would be really funky if us brits became the fourth nation in space ! 
I’d almost written starchaser off as a pipe-dream rather than a serious competitor but they seem to be doing quite well - they’ve done manned drop tests of the capsule and have succesfully tested their rocket engine for a duration long enough to win the X-prize. They’ve also test launched a Nova rocket with a capsule capable of carrying a human (only to a few thousand feet though) - the capsule landed succesfully but the parachute on the rocket got tangled.
More realistically it looks like Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites company will win - from what I gather from their website they have everything in place…we’ll just have to wait and see ! (though even if they do win, it still allows Britain a chance for 4th place into space - if starchaser can still get funding). In any case there are other companies too, it seems only a matter of time before one of them is succesful.
Anyway, China’s first Taikonaut has landed safely. So good luck to China in their space program !
Hope this post makes up for the almost pointlessly short first one !
[quote=“Rhysy 2”]cree : I know India has a goal to launch a man in space but how well is their program progressing ?
(but India would seem to have other problems to sort out before getting a space program up and running)
For sure I agree with you 100%, they should make sure the people in India have clean water to drink and live in something other than tin shacks before they spend billions on a space program.
Cree - they have the same problems in the United States in China…India can do what it wants with its money.
Sure there are social problems to fix but that doesn’t mean you should stifle innovation.
Wonder how an Indian astronaut would be called.
Ramanaut ?
A German one would probably called Krautonaut.
A British ?
BTW, congrats to China.
Though, I don’t see the use for this space program.
Fixing social problems is an innovation. Furthermore, the United States doesn’t have the same problems as India, you might have poverty in the States, but it doesn’t compare to the poverty that India has. What’s the point of sending astronauts in space when it has a 36% literacy rate how innovative is that? How does that benefit people when most can’t even read or write. Even if their space program creates spin off industries, the caste system prevents a large segment of the population from moving up the socio economic ladder by BIRTH even if these people are intelligent, hard working, innovative, and entrepreneurial.
A British ?
A Pommynaut and if he orbits a significant amount of time a Gyropom.
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I just wanna know where china stole/bought the technology from.
From whoever is willing to sell it to them. They also sent students abroad to study in foreign Universities, so give them some credit, they probably developed a lot of it on their own through hard work and research.
I lived in Toronto and it has a large Chinese community. The Chinese are dedicated hard working people. They work hard long hours and start off with nothing and develop successful businesses in no time and send their kids to school and they work hard, they’re bright, don’t party, study hard, and do quite well for themselves.
[quote]
A British ?
A Pommynaut and if he orbits a significant amount of time a Gyropom.
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Thanks. Does make sense.
Russia.
Same technology as Sojus only a bit bigger. (AFAIK)
Very innovative.
You can say the same for the US and Russia , they got their technology from the Germans who got the idea from Goddard, an American, who got the idea from the Chinese. The Chinese were playing with rockets and gun powder in the middle ages when the rest of the world were playing with bow and arrows. What comes around goes around 
China is looking for ways to beat overcrowding again 
Martin
I read sometime ago that china wanted to walk on the moon…well they,re on the good way hehe
One day the dutch will fly, build a cofeeshop on the moon, and grow cheese there too
Why bother. You reached the stars by releasing Blender out to the world.
According to the Chinese international news channel the idea of a moon shot is a dream, they don’t have the technology for it yet (maybe they will keep it secret like and only tell us when they’re actually there ! ). Still, I’ve heard from several different sources (web, tv, magazine) they are aiming for the moon…maybe in about 10 years or so.
Desoto : as cree said India has far worse problems than the USA. Being a space nut I’d love as many space programs as possible but India has other things it ought to deal with first.
Space travel costs billions yes, but not anything like as much as military expenditure. Consider : Bush asked recently for something like $70 billion, enough to finace the whole ISS program, for the Iraq war. Werner Von Brauhn estimated you could get to mars - just using larger versions of Apollo technology - for no more than the price of a border conflict (he originally estimated the price as being equivalent to a full - scale war, but a few years later rocket tecnology had improved so he was able to lower the price). Makes you think, doesn’t it ?
Geeze…people really have it out for india. They have the fourth largest economy in the world for Christ’s sake. They’re not as hard up as you’d think… I have a professor from India who has a PhD. in economics, and one of things he talks about very fequently are the misconceptions about his country. Apparently extreme poverty is one of them. He said that yes, it is more frequent that you find people who don’t have the same material wealth as they do in western countries, but that India’s people live amongst each other in relative peace compared to the western world. He described as being safe and less violent, but impoverished in some places. Sounds to me like the United States has its share of poverty too, and that people who live here ignore it and assume elsewhere is much worse…
was this suposed to be a kind of insult to china?
i’m just curious
Alltaken