Posted on 10/14/2003 3:49:17 PM PDT by bonesmccoy
Thumbs up for Chinas space launch
But Beijing decides against live telecast; preparations veiled in traditional secrecy
JIUQUAN, China, Oct. 15 Keeping his identity secret, China prepared its first astronaut for space travel Tuesday and loaded his rocket with fuel but said the public and the world would have to wait to learn whether the flight succeeds. The Communist Party newspaper Peoples Daily said the launch would most probably happen Wednesday morning, which translates to Tuesday evening ET.
STATE TELEVISION scrapped plans for a live broadcast of the launch. A Hong Kong newspaper said the cancellation was prompted by fears of the political risks of something going wrong. A successful flight would make China the third nation to put a human into space on its own a propaganda prize in which communist leaders have invested 11 years of secretive preparation and untold resources. Communist leaders hope the history-making launch will boost Chinas standing abroad and, more important, help the partys image among a populace weary of corruption and other abuses. The three finalists to become Chinas first taikonaut (TYE-koh-nawt) were reportedly waiting at a Gobi Desert launch base near this dusty city of concrete apartment buildings in the remote northwest. Security was tight around the remote base, some 175 miles (280 kilometers) northeast of Jiuquan: Cars were turned back and phone calls to the base were blocked. Its a big thing for the country, said Zhang Ming, a man buying a leather jacket in Jiuquan on Tuesday.
WHO WILL FLY? The astronaut candidates, all fighter pilots, were to undergo final tests as little as one hour before the flight, state media said. The governments Xinhua News Agency has said the No. 1 astronaut among them would go up the strongest sign yet that the flight will carry only one person. Peoples Daily said the Shenzhou 5 capsule had completed its own final tests and, on Tuesday, was sitting on the launch pad with more fuel being injected. It said top Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao, were to attend the launch.
The launch of Shenzhou 5 is long-awaited by the Chinese people, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue. She said the flight was a key step in the peaceful development of space a reflection of Chinas effort to reassure the world that its military-linked program is benign. The Shenzhou, or Divine Vessel, is based on the three-seat Russian Soyuz capsule, though with extensive modifications. China also paid Moscow to train at least two astronauts. But Beijing insists everything sent into space will be developed and made in China. State media, trying to dispel suggestions that its triumph depends on foreign know-how, refer to Shenzhou as Chinas self-designed manned spaceship. Xinhua quoted space officials Tuesday assuring the public that the astronauts spacesuits were safe and the Long March CZ-2 F booster was Chinas best rocket.
CONFIDENCE AND CONCERN After months of official silence, the government showed growing confidence over the past week, announcing that the flight would blast off sometime between Wednesday and Friday and splashing pictures of the once-secret launch base across newspapers. Advertisement
But the decision to cancel a live broadcast suggested leaders might be unnerved by the thought of the propaganda disaster that an accident could produce. The Peoples Daily Web site gave no explanation for the decision to cancel. China used to broadcast satellite launches live, but stopped in 1995 after a rocket blew up moments after liftoff, reportedly killing six people on the ground. The Shenzhou 5 launch comes after four test launches of unmanned capsules that orbited the Earth for nearly a week before parachuting back to Chinas northern grasslands. State media say the manned flight is expected to last 14 orbits or about 20 hours. State television planned to broadcast taped scenes of the launch only if it succeeds, the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post said, citing media sources. State-run China Central Television would not confirm the report. There might be a live broadcast, or there might not, a CCTV spokeswoman, who refused to give her name, told The Associated Press. CCTV employees arent allowed to answer that question.
DECISION CRITICIZED Dozens of messages left on Chinese Web sites taunted officials for their decision and demanded that the government show its people the historic launch as it happens. Such sites are monitored by censors who enforce official rules on content and sometimes erase postings, which suggested the negative postings were genuine. The decision is very idiotic and reflects our nations lack of confidence, said a note on the popular Sina.com Web site, signed Flyying111. The Gansu Daily, published in the provincial capital, Lanzhou, welcomed the imminent launch. Finally, it said, the time has come to realize the 1,000-year dream of flying dreamed by the sons and daughters of China.
Yes - I wonder if any of the news channels will be plugged in to these sources. This will be a real test of their news-gathering ingenuity.
To assure your safety wear one of these.
Also offers protection from Gedde Lee's annoying high-pitched vocals.
Anyhoo, come reeentry time, the Chinese "Taikonauts" get marooned up there when their reentry thrusters are found empty. Confusion ensues. Question: do we have ANY capability right now to roll out a shuttle to go up there and save their butts?
Be Seeing You,
Chris
You don't actually believe that the Chinese developed this technology on their own, do you?
Heck, the transnational corporations don't give a flying hoot about our national security and are more than willing to give them our technology just to have cheaper launch vehicles for commercial satellites. Our own government has been funding the Russian program for over a decade now. And even the Pentagon is pushing to offshore it's sources of supply.
The American taxpayer and consumer foots the bill and receives none of the benefits.
If all goes according to plan, China will join one of the most exclusive international clubs this week when the country's much-awaited inaugural manned flight is expected to blast off from its space base in a remote part of the communist nation.
Liftoff of the Long March 2F rocket is expected between Wednesday and Friday from a specially-built launch pad at the Jiuquan launching center in the Gobi desert, located in the northern part of China. Official media reports say the pad is located in the Chinese Gansu province, however space experts indicate the site is just across the border with Inner Mongolia.
The launch could be as early as 9 a.m. Wednesday, Beijing time (0100 GMT or 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday), according to some reports. The official Xinhua news agency has only said the prestigious mission will begin "at an appropriate time."
Perched atop the rocket is the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft -- meaning "divine vessel" -- awaiting what likely will be a single passenger that has a background as a high performance fighter pilot in the Chinese air force. Fourteen candidates for the mission were chosen several years ago, and three have recently been selected in a final competition for the coveted seat. It is not known when the world will know the identity of the chosen taikonaut or yuhangyuan -- the two most commonly used terms to refer to Chinese astronauts -- but the answer could come at any time.
The two-stage Long March 2F launcher with four liquid-fueled boosters -- all utilizing a mix of unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer -- will take just under ten minutes to reach orbit. Like the Russian Soyuz manned launch system, if there should be a problem during the boost phase, there is a launch escape system to carry the spacecraft and its crew safely away from danger.
The over 190-foot tall Long March is assembled in the confines of a cavernous integration building that starkly resembles the famous facility at Cape Canaveral that housed the assembly of parts of the massive Saturn 5 moon rockets and today is where critical space shuttle components are put together. Rollout from the assembly building to the launch pad likely comes in the final days leading up to liftoff.
The facilities serving the Long March 2F rocket and its Shenzhou payload were built in the 1990's at the Jiuquan satellite launch center, an almost 45-year old base that very little was known about until recently. Jiuquan was China's first launch site and was originally used to for ballistic missile tests and for lofting satellites into low Earth orbit.
Expected to last just under a day, the mission will initially operate in an elliptical orbit that stretches 200 kilometers by 350 kilometers at an inclination of about 42.4 degrees, Xinhua said Friday. The craft will then perform a maneuver to circularize the orbit at about 343 kilometers, much like recent unmanned Shenzhou missions have done several hours into their flights.
The expectation is that the flight will circle the globe 14 times in about 21 hours, an encore performance of the maiden flight of the Shenzhou spacecraft in November 1999. Shenzhou 5's re-entry module containing the mission's human cargo will then separate from the orbital module, to be left in orbit for a number of months to conduct long-term space experiments.
The re-entry module will then begin its entry sequence to return to Earth. Landing in the remote steppes of the Inner Mongolia province -- not far from the launch site -- should come early in the morning of Thursday, Chinese time, given an ontime launch.
Recovery teams will be standing by awaiting the parachuted touchdown. Little is known about plans for the spacecraft or for its passenger after the flight is completed.
Coverage of the flight was expected to be provided live by CCTV, China's central television network that is available to people across much of the world who have access to a satellite dish. A 20-part documentary was also reportedly in the works. But late Tuesday, the China Daily reported that the CCTV broadcast idea had been abandoned.
Much of the fanfare surrounding the manned spaceflight project is purely propaganda, says Charles Vick, a space analyst with Globalsecurity.org. "This also implies that the manned program serves as both a propaganda platform to say that China is a world power but also serves the purpose of regime leadership legitimization to say to the Chinese people that look what we have achieved under their communist party leadership," he wrote in a draft paper this year on Globalsecurity.org.
Funding for Project 921, the official name for the decade-old military-run program to put a Chinese astronaut in space, is valued at roughly $2.3 billion, according to Globalsecurity.org.
For the large portion of the 33-year history of China's status as a spacefaring nation, events have rarely ever been announced in advance due to the military's heavy involvement in the program. That is in sharp contrast to the past few days, when state-run news agencies have churned out report after report heralding the imminent launch of the nation's first manned mission.
The prestige value of such a mission is perceived as quite high, especially since only two other nations have ever possessed the capability to send humans into space. The Soviet Union and the United States both sent men into space in April and May of 1961, respectively.
You talked a bit about this in the old days...
Yang Liwei who is expected to be China's first yuhangyuan (astronaut) trains at Gagarin Cosmonautics Center several years ago.
Tonight on Radio FreeRepublic!
8pm/5pm - Chuck Muth Interviews Lori Waters from the Eagle Forum!
10pm/7pm - Tom Adkins is ON FIRE! If you have never listened to Tom, don't miss his show tonight and watch Tom slice and dice liberals! Tom has been called a cross between Rush Limbaugh and Mike Savage and his shows are always intertaining and informative!
Close-up view of the Jiuquan launch tower in China is seen in this image taken by Space Imaging's IKONOS satellite, October 13, 2003. China began the final countdown on Oct. 14 in its bid to become the third nation to rocket a man into orbit, with clear skies forecast over the Gobi desert launch pad. Photo by Space Imaging/Reuters
Sattelites pass over this area in intervals of less than an hour. They can only keep the success or failure of this a secret for maybe 45 minutes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.