China launches space mission with first woman astronaut

[Posteritatis]

Source: BBC News

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.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18458544

[Shadowflash]

1. Good for them

At least they have the capability to put people into space.

We no longer have that ability and will now rely on someone who's number one goal is profit if we want it done.

America has fallen so far back.

[bananas]

2. No, his number one goal isn't profit.

His goal, as he puts it, is to make life and consciousness multi-planetary.
His other two big projects are making civilization on earth sustainable with electric cars and solar power.

http://www.esquire.com/features/75-most-influential/elon-musk-1008

<snip>

The Iraq war, the presidential election, and the debt crisis dominate today's headlines, but will amount to little more than a footnote in the long-term annals of history. To figure out what is truly significant, we need to take the longest possible view. There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness. The next big moment will be life becoming multiplanetary, an unprecedented adventure that would dramatically enhance the richness and diversity of our collective consciousness. It would also serve as a hedge against the myriad--and growing--threats to our survival. An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us. Sooner or later, we must expand life beyond our little blue mud ball--or go extinct.

What stands in the way? The ridiculously recalcitrant problem of big, reusable, reliable rockets. Size is fundamental for technical reasons. Only about 1 percent of the liftoff mass of a highly efficient rocket can be accelerated to Mars transfer velocity--it is hard to get there. Reliability is important for obvious reasons. Even the safety record for manned missions close to Earth would be unacceptable. And reusability is critical for economic reasons. Airlines exist because planes are reusable. With the partial exception of the space shuttle, rockets are single-use.

Somehow we have to solve these problems and reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100. That's why I started SpaceX. By no means did I think victory was certain. On the contrary, I thought the chances of success were tiny, but that the goal was important enough to try anyway.

<snip>

[Shadowflash]

3. Yeah.

I'm sure he's doing all this work for the government just out of the kindness of his heart.

Just the fact that the government is at the whims and mercy of a private corporation for so vital an area is obscene and, I've got to hand it to the 'pukes, they are well on their way to privatizing the government.

[bananas]

4. Russia isn't a private corporation.

Right now we're at the whim of Russia for getting our astronauts to the ISS.
There are about a half-dozen companies developing different rockets and spaceplanes.
Musk just gets most of the attention.
And NASA is continuing work on Orion and SLS.

edit to add: and it's the pukes who are opposing commercial crew.

[joshcryer]

9. Erm, NASA's rockets were built by private contractors.

Fuck, the SLS (Space Launch System) is mandated by the right wing congress to use SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters) because it subsidizes the MIC (Military Industrial Complex).

SpaceX is going about it the old fashioned way. There's a danger that SpaceX becomes a monopoly and falls into the same cycles. But I'm not sure it's going to happen if they make reusability happen.

[4th law of robotics]

5. 600 years ago the Chinese built, then burned one of the greatest fleets ever to set sail

Historians were baffled as to why they would let such an opportunity for trade, expansion, and exploration go for seemingly no reason.

Today we a scrapping NASA to save a fraction of a percent of what we fritter away on a dozen other non issues.

By 2600 it's entirely possible that Chinese descendants will be questioning why this once mighty empire, now a hopelessly mired backwater suitable only for cheap labor, went to the trouble of building up the worlds best space exploration fleet, then scrapped it suddenly and without cause, thus relegating themselves to their own little corner of the earth and leaving all of space to the Chinese.

[Shadowflash]

7. yup.

Exactly.

[AsahinaKimi]

6. nice

I hope she makes it safely.

[LongTomH]

12. Apparently her first aspiration was to be a bus conductor

The DragonSpace page on the Space Daily website has an article about her: Liu Yang: China's first female astronaut:

As a child, Liu Yang once wanted to be a bus conductor and later had her sights set on becoming a lawyer, but decades later she has travelled into space as China's first ever female astronaut.

It was a visit by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to her school in central China that changed young Liu's mind as she realised she wanted to become a pilot -- a decision that eventually saw her take on the historic role.

Liu, 33, was unveiled as China's first female astronaut on Friday, and blasted off to space on Saturday along with two other male colleagues aboard the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft, in China's most ambitious space mission yet.

"From day one I have been told I am no different from the male astronauts," Liu, a trained pilot who is married but has no children, said in comments carried by state media before the launch.

Read more at: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Liu_Yang_Chinas_first_female_astronaut_999.html

[jade3000]

13. Thanks for this background

It's great to get the human side of these stories. I'm happy for China that they're getting into space. I think it's an important part of the human adventure.

[joshcryer]

8. Neil Tyson: First woman to space: USSR 2 years, China 9 years, US 21 years.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Time elapsed before the launch of a female astronaut: USSR: 2 years. China: 9 years. USA: 21 years.

[tabasco]

10. Yawn.

[joshcryer]

11. What'd I do?

[Franker65]

14. Well Done

I think its great, well done to Liu Yang. Very important event for China.

[Uncle Joe]

15. It seems China is committed to moving rapidly forward in regards to space flight and exploration.

At about 60 tonnes in mass, this proposed station would be considerably smaller than the 400-tonne international platform operated by the US, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan, but its mere presence in the sky would nonetheless represent a remarkable achievement.

Concept drawings describe a core module weighing some 20-22 tonnes, flanked by two slightly smaller laboratory vessels.

(snip)

China is investing billions of dollars in its space programme. It has a strong space science effort under way, with two orbiting satellites having already been launched to the Moon. A third mission is expected to put a rover on the lunar surface.

The Asian country is also deploying its own satellite-navigation system known as BeiDou, or Compass.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18458544

I wish them the best.

Thanks for the thread, Posteritatis.