Chinese Dudes In Space

The People's Republic of China has become the third nation to have its astronauts (or as the Chinese call them, "taikonauts") complete a spacewalk, after the United States and Soviet Union. Zhai Zhigang, a member of the "Shenzhou 7" mission, spent about twenty minutes yesterday floating outside his spacecraft. Zhai waved the Chinese flag in space for the first time and retrieved a small amount of "hardened lubricant" from the exterior of the spacecraft. This was only the third manned spaceflight for the world's most populous nation, but it's pushing its program hard with an eye on achieving specatacular results that will make the world take notice.

The Chinese government claims that it is working towards putting a man on the moon, something the Americans and Russians don't seem to think is worth the money at the moment. The scientific community appears to be somewhat split on how close the Chinese actually are to achieving this. The spacewalk went off without a hitch, and the Chinese are also pointing to the reliability of their new, independently-designed spacesuit (i.e. it's not a knock-off of the American version), which Zhai used for the first time on this mission. The Chinese also appear to be heading towards their own national "SkyLab"-type space station.

One interesting aspect of this is that the spacewalk was carried live on Chinese television. This shows great confidence on the part of the control-freak Chinese government that things would go well. Even if they had the capability, Soviet Russia would never have considered such a thing, because of the possible propaganda disaster of a catastrophic failure. China's government is learning at least a little of the value of openness, perhaps influenced by the recent Summer Olympics.

I was surprised by the lack of coverage this event received in the United States. Admittedly, it came on a heavy news weekend here, dominated by the Presidential debate and the economic crisis. However, if one wanted to find coverage of this story in any sort of depth, one basically had to seek out science-focused websites. Was there more coverage elsewhere in the world?