Posted on 06/16/2012 9:46:13 AM PDT by JerseyanExile
China has launched its latest manned space mission - whose crew includes its first female astronaut, Liu Yang.
The Shenzhou-9 capsule rode to orbit atop a Long March rocket from the Jiuquan spaceport on the edge of the Gobi desert.
Ms Liu and her two male colleagues are heading to the Tiangong space lab.
They will spend over a week living and working on the 335km-high vessel, testing new systems and conducting a number of scientific experiments.
Before leaving, the crew were presented to Communist Party officials, VIPs and the media.
Wearing their flight suits and sitting behind glass, they waved and smiled.
"We will obey orders, listen to directions and be calm; and co-ordinate together to successfully complete China's first manned rendezvous and docking mission," said Commander Jing Haipeng.
China's top legislator, Wu Bangguo, wished them well and told them: "We are expecting your safe return."
The Shenzhou-9 spacecraft lifted off on schedule at 18:37 local time (10:37 GMT; 11:37 BST).
All systems appeared to function normally and eight minutes later, the spacecraft had entered orbit. Very shortly after Shenzhou-9 had unfurled its solar panels.
It will take a couple of days to reach Tiangong. A docking is planned for Monday at 15:00 Beijing time (07:00 GMT; 08:00 BST).
Mr Jing, 46, is making his second spaceflight after participating in the Shenzhou-7 outing in 2008 - the mission that included China's first spacewalk.
His flight engineers are both first-timers, however.
Liu Wang, 42, a People's Liberation Army fighter pilot, has got his chance after spending 14 years in the China National Space Administration's astronaut corps.
Thirty-three-year-old Liu Yang, also a fighter pilot, has on the other hand emerged as China's first woman astronaut after just two years of training.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Perhaps room enough to store a few kegs of beer.
I don’t think you got the joke.
“first mission to Chinese space-station”
Gotta hand it to the Chinese, they didn’t put up their space station, then name it the “International Space Station”.
We paid over 80%, probably more like 90% of the cost of our space station, and then named it the “International Space Station”.
Then we neglected to replace the shuttle, and discontinued our manned space program.
Do our leaders have a screw loose or what? You get one guess, and the ‘or what’ option was scratched.
I mean, where can you find great leaders like this? We’re so fricken lucky. /s
Lunch and dinner on board.
Lunch and dinner on board.
“...We simply no longer have the luxury of national wealth to pursue this sort of science...”
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I agree but at the same time we could have — if we were not funding massive government waste, hundreds of billions in illegal alien support, massive welfare rolls, some wars that have turned out to be a waste of life and treasure, and national suffering from a class of electorate that is ignorant, selfish and stupid that voted into our White House the worst possible anti-American Marxist that is destroying what we do have left and has spent 5 trillion generating huge totally wasted multi-generational debt.
When you compare all this to cost of our space program, in its most productive days, the cost of NASA and all its projects does not even appear on the radar. This is what makes me mad as hell!!!! But I never did expect THIS administration in particular to do anything but destroy our space program as part of an agenda to fund the forcing of socialism upon America and pull down all of our greatness.
Hope you can understand my frustration with what our own government has done, and continues to do to us as the once greatest nation on earth.
You’re dead on target there.
We should already be on the moon, very close to going to Mars, and elsewhere.
Space is the new high ground.
Whoever controls it, controls a whole lot more than that.
I do think NASA should have been managed better. I’m not happy with the paths we took, and the malaise that crept in.
We should have a robust space program. We should have a massive atomic collider. We should be doing the work of discovering for the next generation of high tech.
These are strategic matters. They are military related, and will have many private sector spin-offs.
We should gut welfare. We should cut it in half in three years, and eliminate it entirely within seven.
We then pay down the debt and utilize savings and new income to do exploration that keeps us strong.
I can understand your frustration. I don’t like the situation any more than you do.
I’m very good with math and financial math, and I’m here to tell you that what you see happening in Europe is our fate very soon unless we U-turn out of this idiotic, mindless support of banking sector grifters as well as “free trade” policies which export 10’s of billions of dollars in real wealth out of the US every month.
Space will always be there. If we don’t go now or in five years, it will still be there in 20.
If we don’t get spending under control now, ASAP, within the next couple of years, the future of the US is not assured. Conservatives who really care about the future of the US will have to put aside their designs on public spending (military, space, etc) and start down a road of determining what we really need. We want a space program. We don’t *need* a space program.
We need a military. We don’t need a F-35 multi-role/multi-nation jobs program posing as a fighter.
And so on.
If fiscal conservatives want to really slash the budget, then we’re going to have to play fiscal aikido: The liberals will say “We won’t cut entitlements/welfare/etc until the military budget is cut.”
So write legislation to cut the projects the provide jobs in their districts - and cut them hard, hard, hard, then come back to the table and say “Done. Now show us what cuts you’ll make.” If they don’t come through, start hammering them in the press and at election time.
The endgame is drawing much closer, much faster than I’d previously thought. The Ivy League crowd in DC think that they’re oh-so-terribly smart are whistling past the graveyard, and anyone who says that they can turn this situation around without making the population feel some pain now is lying. They might not believe they are lying because they still believe the bromides about “growing our way out of it,” and “taxes and regulation can be slashed and the private sector will just bloom...” but the truth is, they’re lying. The only way to turn this around now will involve big, dramatic cuts, big changes in immigration, trade and domestic policy and even then, we won’t turn the situation around quickly.
So if SpaceX had several astronauts on board a failed mission. Could SpaceX survive the litigation and the public outcry? Probably not.
“..I’m very good with math and financial math, and I’m here to tell you that what you see happening in Europe is our fate very soon unless we U-turn out of this idiotic, mindless support of banking sector grifters as well as “free trade” policies which export 10’s of billions of dollars in real wealth out of the US every month...”
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Hi NVDave — yes, I agree 100%. My addressing of the space program was a sidebar of the horrid situation we are in. It will take getting rid of the present primary problem, by “flushing the toilet” in November as just a starting point. Then a healing process must begin which will be long and very hard work. But getting the government back to a government for and by the people will be step one to rebuild confidence in the people that we even have a government work FOR the people....and shows it through action. It will take many small steps and will have to be managed in a very serious manner.
Given that, I pray that the toilet gets flushed in November because, well, you know where it will all go if it does not. But I continue to be optimistic now that our White House horror story is clearly showing itself to even the most naive of the electorate. Some will never care — just pray for those that do care about America.
Thanks much for the chat!!! God Bless America.
“Liu Yang”
Isn’t that the name of a Panda Bear?
We also need to STOP “free trade”.
Now.
A private American company just sent a cargo ship to the space station to deliver a ton of supplies. The mission was successful. The ship is designed to carry humans and plans are in place to test that before too long.
Government no more has to run a space program than it has to subsidize electric cars. We can do it ourselves! And make money at the same time!
Right. Because you can never have enough government intervention in our lives. Cringing, you peddle your anti-free-trade beliefs on every possible thread, but you never tell us why you think government can regulate our economic lives better than we can, ourselves.
china have so much capital because THEY SAVE!!! While American policy is to encourage people to go borrow money to buy a house or invest in business
You want to stop capitalism? Capitalism is free trade. You give me $10, I get a bag of chips. You want to stop that? If free trade between individuals is a good thing, then its a good thing between nations, because nations are people
magic formula to economic growth
saving -> capital formation -> productivity -> wages increase -> higher living standard aka consumption
Consumption comes at the end. Its the effect of high savings. Look at it from an individual point of view. The more you save, the more you can consume
It looks smaller than even the old Skylab. But those figures beneath the models are not in scale with them.
I'll bet those gents with her find her more teddy-bear-cuddly with each passing hour!
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