China has launched its first manned space flight and has become only the third country to put a man into orbit. Lift-off from the Gobi desert was at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, the start of a mission that it is hoped will rocket China into the exclusive space club pioneered by the former Soviet Union and United States four decades ago. A Long March 2F rocket called the Shenzhou V — "divine ship" in Chinese — carried a single "taikonaut" named Yang Liwei, 38, following a trail blazed by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and American Alan Shepard in 1961. "The Shenzhou mission, if successful, will make China the third nation to send a man into outer space, following the former Soviet Union and the United States," the official Xinhua news agency said in a brief dispatch. State television said later that the spacecraft had entered Earth orbit.
Sounds like they?re using really basic hardware: the one illustration of Shenzhou I've seen looked close to the old Russian Soyuz.
Still, you?ve gotta respect, and envy, anyone who takes the ride. Get home safe, Liwei. |