response 1 of 28:

Oct 15 01:34 UTC 2003

"China, I'd like to take this opportunity to say, 'Welcome to the 1960s.'"
-- Jon Stewart

response 3 of 28:

Oct 15 07:57 UTC 2003

How do they know they sent the right one up?? I mean, they all look 
alike, dont they?? ;-)

There is another news story that Malaysia is next in the queue.

response 7 of 28:

Oct 15 20:18 UTC 2003

The official Chinese freakout about live coverage makes me think that 
there's still a lot of mindset over there which the West isn't going 
to get along with.
 
(Come on, China!  The US has had 17 astronauts die with wall to wall 
news coverage, and nobody thinks less of us for it.)
 
I'm not going to dig for the link, but I read a conservative pundit 
who was worrying about the potential for a Chinese lead in military 
space technology.
He worries the Chinese already have good enough spy satellite coverage
to track the whole US Navy.

response 9 of 28:

Oct 16 09:42 UTC 2003

The astronaut is back already. Why did they send him?? I mean did they 
just want to see if they are capable of sending live beings in space 
or was it a trumpet thing?

Indians too have caught the stupid bug. Apparently, they want to send 
someone to the moon.

response 11 of 28:

Oct 16 14:11 UTC 2003

o/~ Everybody's going to the moon... o/~

response 15 of 28:

Oct 17 18:21 UTC 2003

sj2 in resp:9 :: "Why did they send him?"   Primarily as proof of concept,
to be sure they could send a human and get him back alive.  Previously,
IIRC, the Chinese had flown empty spacecraft, and then animals.
For their first manned flight, 21 hours, the Chinese skipped ahead 
to what the US did with the end of Project Mercury.  But I guess
there was no need for the Chinese to recapitulate the baby steps that
the USA and USSR took, verifying that short flights into space wouldn't
get you killed.

The Chinese have serious ambitions for space, the sort the USA used to 
have before the economy went sour in the 1970s, and before the tax-cutting
wave that started in the 1980s.  The whole Chinese program may be 
"a trumpet thing," in your words, but things like that are one of 
the hallmarks of a great civilization -- exploration, triumphal 
architecture, art, that sort of useless stuff.

I can't point you to an article but I recall reading that the Chinese
are talking about a space station, and about flights to the moon.

response 19 of 28:

Oct 27 03:29 UTC 2003

        In the 100th anniversarry year of flight, the USA space
shuttles are on hold, the Concords are being grounded for good,
and the Chinnese take to flight.  They are not 40 years behind,
they, by USA Appolo timelines, could be 8 years or less away
from Chinnese on the moon.
        They just might do it better.  Lunar orbit spacestation,
shuttles in-between.

response 21 of 28:

Oct 27 08:40 UTC 2003

  Only when pigs fly..

response 23 of 28:

Oct 27 14:31 UTC 2003

By lunar orbit, do you mean the same orbit as the moon, or orbit around the
moon?  The first seems merely impractical (too much fuel to get there,
little benefit in being that far out.) The second is nearly impossible;
because of the influence of the earth's gravity and some other factors, it's
very difficult to get any kind of stable orbit around the moon.