Congratulations to China for doing what Russia and the USA did 43 years ago. I mean, great for them, but come on.
Russian Alexei Leonov makes the first spacewalk (March 18, 1965)
Ed White makes the first American spacewalk (June 3, 1965)
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First Chinese Spacewalk
September 27th, 2008
28 Comments
Assuming we continue to send the Chinese our manufacturing and engineering expertise, the Chinese will probably be able to overtake us rather quickly.
Remember, there was only a 7 year gap between our first manned space missions and our first cracks at the moon. The technology curve can probably be overcome twice as fast this time around.
With the piles of cash the Chinese gov’t and banks are sitting on thanks to our flawed policies, they are in a great position to overtake us in a number of areas of expertise: aircraft carriers, space missions, technology advancement, scientific exploration, etc.
I would be worried. We’re still debating the efficacy of evolution…not exactly a step in the right direction. Communists got one thing right: atheism wins over religion.
And 43 years ago they were a damned mess, with a hell of a lot of manpower, some soviet aid and not much else. This is a big deal for them. Not TOO big a deal on the world stage, but I’m sure it will be accompanied by some ‘rise of Asia’ metaphors.
True, it took them a long time to get here– but never forget that the Chinese play the long game. They’re not going to do the bread-and-circuses stunt of sending a man to the moon and bringing him home only to abandon manned space travel pretty much completely.
Within ten years they may well be on their way to Mars.
We’ll be too damn broke to go to New Jersey.
First its 43 years behind,
then its 43 months behind,
then 43 days behind,
and look………
they are 43 days ahead,
43 months ahead,
43 years ahead.
Don’t sleep on the Chinese, I’m telling you now.
“we need a missle defense shield”-repubs
Communists got one thing right: atheism wins over religion.
To be blunt: Wrong.
China’s insistence on trampling on the rights of their citizens is their biggest roadblock to becoming a legit superpower. I don’t dispute America needs to go back to a cold war mentality on education, but the principles we have that give us the right to religion – or no religion – are far superior to traditional Communist Chinese doctrine.
I have no doubt great things are in store for the Chinese people, but they’ve got to quit putting lead in toys and poisoning baby formula before they get there.
They’re not going to do the bread-and-circuses stunt of sending a man to the moon and bringing him home only to abandon manned space travel pretty much completely.
I am first in line to bitch and moan about the limited scope of our space program, but don’t pretend we turned out the lights after Apollo. That’s an insult to the work of the astronauts, engineers, scientists and others who have been part of our manned spaceflight, rover, telescopic, and satellite programs.
Communists got one thing right: atheism wins over religion.
To be blunt: Wrong.
You know, as an atheist, I gotta agree with you, Oliver. It should not be the business of government to dictate what people choose to believe, regardless of the ideology.
Would a country run better without religion? I have no doubt. But you can’t legislate morality, and you can’t impose your beliefs on others at the end of a gun. Believe what you choose to believe, leave me out of it.
Yeah, but a half-hour later …
China – China has morphed from a Communist(sic)totalitarian state to a Fascist totalitarian state. Both are pretty ugly. China cannot afford to become a Democratic state because the country would break apart if their people had freedom to choose. HOWEVER, one of the most serious threats to China – and by a stroke of good luck – to the US of A is Islamic Fundies. Because of these crazies we in the West have an opportunity to court China on common ground. Something I thnk Obama will do very nicely, thank you.
However, on the question of Religion – the appalling stupidity of Religion was OK when as Marx put it “Religion is the opiate of the people.” Unfortunately, in the muslim world, the jewish world and the christian world the crazies are slowly taking over the respective religions. Those of us that CLEARLY understand religion – in my case I was going to become a Catholic Priest before I became an athiest – can no longer sit by and let religious beliefs go unchallenged.
So Oliver bearing in mind that – I love your site – love you – and respect you – IF you’re a Christian , Jew or Muslim here’s ONE of literally hundreds of good reason’s why you’re wrong. Not STUPID just IGNORANT (and I mean that in a nice way – not a mean one).
I think the time has come that the world should stop “accepting” “leadership” from the people of the “Book.” As Bob Dylan sang, “… the times they are a-changin’…”
Think about this; Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the “Book,” believe that a god, created the universe, made us in his image, gave us dominion over this cute little third planet from this sun, in this lovely galaxy, and then, in just one example of his many personal explicit crimes, he purposely drowned everyone, except for the a few of the “just” that could fit in Noah’s boat. The god they believe in, from their own “book,” is a self-confessed homicidal mass murderer!
That is not what’s so alarming. More alarming is that, not only do these deluded people believe this nonsense, they actually worship the homicidal mass murderer that did this atrocity and countless others. They actually venerate him, and look forward to spending eternity “in his loving embrace.”
Unfortunately, it gets even worse. All three religions believe their “Messiah” is going to come and deal with their enemies and save them…the humorous side of this is that each of the three “religions,” and their literally thousands of sub-religions and cults, believe the other two religions, and their respective plethora of cults, are whom their “Messiah” is going to save them from…
The older I get the more I think John Lennon had it right in the 60’s when he wrote…
“Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky…
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one.”
Amusingly, many of the people of the “Book” I’ve talked to about this think I’m the one that’s a few bricks short of a load.
Good Grief Charlie Brown!
So 40 years after the Americas took their first space walk, the Chinese get it done. Congrats. With massive Chinese espionage efforts, stolen technology and software even the Chinese have reached outer space. You have to admire them even their fake pre launch communications had melamine in it.
Dego
So 40 years after the Americas took their first space walk the Chinese get it done. Congrats. With massive Chinese espionage efforts, stolen technology and software even the Chinese have reached outer space. You have to admire them even their fake pre launch communications had melamine in it.
Dego
I’m a born-again agnostic, but I gotta call bullshit on Mylegacy’s take on religion.
First up, when Marx made his opiate analogy, opiates were seen as GOOD things by a lot of people — they brought relief to suffering folks and helped them feel better.
Next, Lennon’s “Imagine” is one of the biggest crocks of bullshit ever recorded. Beautiful song, but sheer unbridled fantasy by one of the greatest con artists who ever lived — an insanely successful capitalist who made mega-millions denouncing capitalism. As Howard Stern once put it — “Hey, Yoko, imagine there’s no money!”
But back to the topic at hand… right now, I think that China’s space program is more capable than ours is. They have destroyed satellites in orbit. They currently have a vehicle that can at least match the Shuttle for reaching orbit, and are closer to putting a man on the moon than we are — and have said that is their goal.
This is something to worry about.
J.
China’s insistence on trampling on the rights of their citizens is their biggest roadblock to becoming a legit superpower.
The key word here being “citizens.” How did the U.S. become a ‘legit’ superpower? I’m sure it had nothing to do with the genocide of the aboriginal population and four-plus centuries of chattel slavery and oppression of Africans and their descendants. I’m sure that growth to ‘legit’ superpower status also had nothing to do with oppressing our Latin American neighbors in service of economic gain. In all seriousness, OW, the biggest difference between Chinese oppression and our ‘legit’ oppression is that we managed to perform ours largely against carefully (or opportunistically) selected ‘others.’
Not that anyone here is singing China’s praises, but a nation in our glass house (with our current involvement in two foreign wars of imperialist agression, and especially with our deepening negative trade balance and debt to China) is in no position to throw snide little stones at anyone else.
Church Secretary, there is NOT ONE THING the United States does today that comes close to the treatment China gives its subjects (I can’t even call them “citizens”). From the mandatory abortions to the billing the family for the cost of executions to the absolute lack of anything resembling freedoms we take for granted to their conquest and subjugation of people to their propping up other dictatorships to their products killing and injuring people all around the world, the Chinese government is one of the greatest enemies of humanity today.
And for you to excuse their ongoing, systemic, habitual violations of the most basic of human rights by saying “oh, well, America’s done bad stuff, too,” is nothing short of disgusting.
J.
Yes, JT, the behavior of the Chinese government in regard to human rights is abominable.
However, Church Secretary’s reminding us of the sins of our past is not “disgusting” but necessary. Too many people nowadays think of US history as vignettes: some guys with powdered wigs, blah blah, Abe Lincoln blah blah, World War Two, hippies stab us in the back on Vietnam, Reagan wins the Cold War blah blah, Clinton got a blowjob, NINE ELEVEN, and here we are!
I would go so far as to suggest that that is the way Republicans would PREFER we think about history.
Church Secretary reminds us that it’s a little more complicated than that. And that’s good.
I am first in line to bitch and moan about the limited scope of our space program, but don’t pretend we turned out the lights after Apollo.
You do realize that the US is on the verge of losing it’s ability to send people into space at all. We’re down to a couple relic shuttles, with no replacement launch vehicle on the near horizon.
Church Secretary, there is NOT ONE THING the United States does today that comes close to the treatment China gives its subjects
Really Mr. Tea?
Let’s recall that owning people–buying and selling their bodies at will–was once the law of the land. Written into our very founding documents.
Even if I spot you that the Chinese government is brutal in its treatment of dissidents, you don’t think slavery even comes close?
There are some reasons for popular historical support among the Chinese people for their Communist government/overlords.
1) They fought and drove out the Japanese, while America’s crooked preferred Chinese overlord Chung Kai-Shek retreated inland.
2) Marxism was equated with anti-imperialism (primarily because of Lenin’s influence), and the Chinese were understandably sick of western powers interfering in their affairs. The Marxists promised to be nobody’s puppet, and indeed, even taking into account the daliances with the USSR, they have not been.
3) As in Ho’s Vietnam and Castro’s Cuba (and S. Korea, where the communists enjoyed widespread popularity), the idea of seizing land from an extreme minority wealthy gentry and western owners for the benefit of an impoverished peasantry was self-evidently appealing. Obviously it has not worked that way, but basically, the extreme upward concentration of wealth in those countries invited a popular communist insurgency.
This is a lot more complicated than white hats and black hats, JT. Careful who you accuse of propping up dictatorships.
Here’s the deal: America’s history isn’t all sweets and roses, but the principles it was founded on were instrumental in its path to being a superpower. At the same time it is the abandonment of those principles that has led us to the state we are in today.
By the way, it isn’t scary that China is going to the moon. It is a good thing. The moon ain’t ours. The plaque placed on the moon by Apollo 11 says
The US space program needs direction and leadership. My preference is for a Mars mission, but it is clear from the current state of things that’s not going to be a front-burner deal.
This is a great achievement, sure it was 40 some years later than the US, but the important thing is that is China who did this, not Iran, not North Korea, not Cuba. Which should really be a relief to us all, I dont see why some people are so worried.
What a lot of people failed to realize is that it only took China 30 years to get from the war torn country (and damage did by Mao) to what you see in the Olympics.
Japan and Germany rebuilt quickly after the war too but they were industrized country to begin with before the war, and the US help A LOT; where as China after the war and afte Mao had died (around 78 or 79 I think, and from after WWII till Mao’s death China didn’t really go anywhere), had nothing and were not getting much help from anyone (except Soviet but the relationship did not last long at all).
When you think of it, 30 years ago, China was like what North Korea looked like, and now it had just hosted the most successful Olympics and sent 3 people up in space. When western world look at China thinking oh its a threat to us and they will get us someday, maybe they should really look at China as Hope, hope that a country used to be just like North Korea can come to this point and really open up and in most part, a peaceful country in the world.
Of course they have problems, tainted food, human rights, etc., but who doesn’t? Keep in mind China was raped by all the big powers in the late 1800 and early 1900 till end of WWII, and China used 30 years to achieve what western countries achieved in more than 100 years, ain’t gonna be smooth sailing after that rush. Also, China has to feed 1.3 billion people, 1.3 billion! If you increase the US population to 1.3 billion, it’d probably have ALL the problems China’s facing, actually probably more with the current leadership…
Quaker, once again you let your hatred of me blind you to actually reading what I say:
I said “does today,” and you decide that I’m wrong because of something that ended almost 150 years ago.
I call it the “clean hands” fallacy. Because we have been imperfect in the past, we have no moral standing to condemn those who act reprehensibly today. It’s a chickenshit argument, put forth by those who lack the courage to stand up and say “X is wrong” without equivocating.
Yes, the US has done some terrible things in our past. But WE CORRECTED OURSELVES.
And that has absolutely nothing to do with China treating its subjects today like chattel. Nothing.
J.
JT, you are not putting things in perspective, you can’t compare what US is like today to China’s now, actually, you just cant compare US with China at all.
If Bill Gates comes along and say “Hey Jay, why the F aren’t you donating 500 million dollars to the poor kids in Africa??” and you’d say “ehh, cuz I dont have that much money you prick, but I do donate 500 bucks each year I think its good enough” and he’d laugh and you’d kill him.
Compare China’s now with China’s then, you’ll see what the country has accomplished. Do you realize how long it took the US to “correct itselves”? Are you gonna give China the time to correct itself as well? Don’t you hate it when your parents use to say, “dont do this dont do that I’ve been there I know…”, do you actually listen to them? I hopd not, you gotta find your our way out, and thats good for the kid.
China gotta do that too, they are the most unique economy in the world, no one walked their path before (except USSR and they failed), so they gonna figure it out by themselves, not from someone who’s already got to the finish line and yelling “hey stupid, why didn’t you take that way?”.
China is not all that bad, look at new orlands vs the flood that goes on in China every year, the chinese government is always a lot more devoted and very effective at getting people out of the mess; then you look at what the US government did…
This Eric guy…..he can’t spell or punctuate a sentence, but he has some good points.
Jay Tea, of course, uses two words in his screed– “does now” — to prove his narrow argument was technically correct, and therefore somebody else is an idiot. Typical Jay Tea behavior.
How far along in the struggle for Human Rights were we 30 years after our founding? How about 30 years after our Civil War? Or 30 years after the “Gilded Age”?
To people ignorant of history, like I said, the timeline appears to be: George Washington cut down the cherry tree, Ronald Reagan brought the hostages home, 9/11, the end. It’s pathetic.
Conservatives don’t have the imagination or sense of empathy to be able to picture themselves in another’s shoes.
Oh, amd JT? No one hates you. No one cares that much.
How far along in the struggle for Human Rights were we 30 years after our founding? How about 30 years after our Civil War? Or 30 years after the “Gilded Age”?
Bruce – exactly. We’re beneficiaries of the long northern and western European history of republican (small r) government, the current arc beginning in the 1300s with the balance of power leaning generally more toward a representative legislature and away from the executive ever since. These other countries (former colonies all, not surprisingly) are moving at their own pace. Obviously the UN’s idea of human rights needs to be supported, but the world is more nuanced than ‘noble capitalists vs. eeeevil commies and terrorists.’
China’s export vs. import position is the envy of the capitalistic western world. China, at this time, can easily throw the US economic system into the shitter. They could decide to impose harsh tariffs on their export trade, which would cause our Wal-Mart economy massive indigestion.
This isn’t about religious freedom vs. totalitarianism. This is about a country that is stepping into capitalist arena with a huge base of ready to work labor and a country that is actively pulling all the right levers to attract Western investment. Western companies drool at the cost of Chinese labor, thus Western jobs have matriculated East.
Any complaints about Chinese human rights abuses (and other related subjects) really need to be directed at the multi-national corporations who do business with them. That is the real moral issue. The multi-nationals don’t really care about human rights issues so long as the bottom line looks great. Profits reign over concerns about human condition. This has been proven time and time again in both the world markets and on America’s main street. We love (and now depend on) cheap Chinese products.
All of this brings us back to Chinese attempts at becoming a nation that can send astronauts into space, making scientific discovery and becoming an economic super-power. The space walk shows they are beginning to succeed in all of these areas.
The problem is this: History has show that it takes a strong economy to build a strong military. The United States still has the lead in terms of military technology and advancement, but if the Chinese can continue their economic trajectory, they will be in a position to buy the military expertise they may be lacking. When you factor in the huge dichotomy of populations (1.3 billion vs. 320 million) the writing is on the wall. At some point in the deep future the Chinese may relax their policies on human rights, and this would even the playing field considerably. Imagine 1.3 billion or more citizens in China enjoying the kinds of freedom and opportunity that we currently enjoy. In that scenario you would see a true Super Power waiting in the wings ready to assert whatever it desires. If China wants world domination, it’s certainly well prepared and very capable.
Wake up…we need to get to work here in the US. We’re well on our way to becoming serfs of the Chinese economic powerhouse. In many ways, we’re already there.
We did a moonwalk 39 years ago, too, but we can’t do it now. That’s the point.
China in racing us to the moon right now, and their timeline is just as aggressive as our timeline for a return to the moon. With the priorities of changing administrations, we might not even go again at all.
If China beats us there this time, it won’t matter that we went in 1969.
Do u know PRC China was founded in 1949? all people make fun of her?