In the fall of 2011, China launched its first space station, the Tiangong 1, aboard a Long March 2F/G rocket. It was launched into orbit without a crew. Its mission was to serve as manned laboratory and a test platform for orbital rendezvous. The Tiangong 1was remotely maneuver into different obits during its mission. The Tiangong 1 is intended to be the first in a series of three Tiangong space stations with the largest to be launched in 2023.
In my last blog post I brought my coverage of the Chinese Space Program up to 2002 and the final unmanned launched of a space craft capable of taking astronauts to orbit. Today, I am going to talk about the first manned missions launched by the Chinese.
The watershed events of Mao's death in 1976 and Dong Xiaoping's rise to power in 1978 brought many changes in China. The development of the China's space program slowed and some military missile projects were cancelled. But the space program recovered from the slow down and new projects were launched.
The Cultural Revolution, which was started by Mao in 1966, convulsed China. During the Cultural Revolution, many bureaucrats, teachers, and other professionals were purged and forced to work in the countryside as Mao sought to removed "capitalist" elements from positions of authority. The turbulence that ensued did serious social and economic damage to China.
At the end of World War II, the Russians and the Americans both captured German rocket scientists and rocket technology. Mao Zedong led a communist revolution and rose to power in China in1949. Concerned with the U.S. threat to use nuclear weapons in the Korean War in the early Fifties, Mao decided that China needed to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them in order to be respected and taken seriously by the other major powers.
I have been fascinated by the China since I was a child. Their civilization has existed for thousands of years. Periodically, they would have a strong leader who would unite the country and provide stability for exploration, innovation and trade. Then their empire would collapse from corruption and civil war or external invasion. After a time, a strong leader would arise to unify the nation and the cycle would repeat.
The height of the Cold War
Star light is forever
The light that stars have emitted is still around in the universe. This forms a cosmic 'fog' that can be utilized by astronomers to determine the space between stars. These types of things make me wonder if we could make use of this light to do the extraordinary think powering time-travel machines.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been great for understanding space and the universe. It was the Hubble and Keck telescopes that have given great insights into the formation of galaxies. Galaxies take ages to mature and this time span is in the billions of years. Being a space enthusiast for so long, this is actually not news to me.
Space shuttle Endeavour
The space shuttle Endeavour is being transported from LAX to the California Science Center. Crowds are snapping pictures of Endeavor, eager to capture a historic moment as the space shuttle moves through the city at a top speed of 2 mph. It is now the new star in LA moving at a slow pace which is a far cry from the way it used to hurtle through space.
It really seems to make for an out of this world sight. This transport of Endeavour is a huge project costing $10 million with roads and underground utilities being modified to withstand its weight. Everything about Endeavour’s journey has been a once in a lifetime sight starting from its hop-scotch across the country on a Boeing 747 that looked so peculiar.
