China's Space Program Driven by Military Ambitions

[Bernie]

Just finished reading an interesting article on China's space program.

"China is readying an unpiloted Shenzhou 3 spaceship for flight, a key step toward claiming a prestigious position in the heavens - becoming the third nation after Russia and the United States to attain an independent ability to launch humans into Earth orbit.

Sending people into space, and eventually to the Moon, is a piece of a much grander Chinese agenda.

China's all-purpose space schedule not only entails increasing use of satellites for weather watching, resource monitoring, and communications purposes.

A military space war-fighting strategy is also being put in place..."

Full article at...
China's Space Program Driven by Military Ambitions

[paul]

Hey Bernie.
I read the article. The article is over 2 years old so it's somewhat dated.
I would not be surprised that China would also be pursuing military options in space. I'm we and the Russians have and if I were in their place I would do the same.
Are you a space buff?

[Bernie]

I wouldn't say I'm a space buff by any stretch, but the recent Mars explorations piqued my interest. To think that we are able to remotely control a rover so far away and finally see what centuries of astronomers only dreamed about. It boggles the mind.

A while back I downloaded and played around with a program that lets you manipulate the actual maps from NASA's Mar's mission. While it was processor intensive it was cool to check out the landscape and move around in it. Forgot the name of it though, but maybe I saved a copy of the OS-X program somewhere. It was a huge download!!!

As for the Chinese in space I must admit that there are some unanswered questions as to their true aim. Perhaps I'm just being greedy in wanting the US to guard all this effort over the past decades, but that's just me.

Now that I think about it, wasn't there a movie where the US discovers that another country (I think the UK) went to the moon first? When they land they find a flag from another country already there? Maybe I'm hallucinating :-) , but I swear I saw something like this when I was a kid.

[paul]

I vaguely remember that movie Bernie. I keep think Peter Cushing was in it but I'm probably off base here.
I wouldn't worry about our the Chinese. For one, our space capabilities far exceeds anyone else's for the near future. Secondly, despite the hype, China does not concern me as an aggressor nation as say the old Soviets.
I love space exploration and support NASA though I think they are in need of significant reorganization. I believe exploration like art allows us to look beyond our day to day needs and envision mankind's possibilities. 8)