China to launch permanent manned space station

China to launch permanent manned space station within 15 years



China will launch its own permanent manned space station within 15 years, but does not plan to send a man to the moon, the chief designer of the country's space program was cited as saying Tuesday.
Wang Yongzhi also revealed that China's manned space program has guzzled 18 billion yuan (2.18 billion dollars) over the past 11 years.

Under the program, China will construct a permanent manned space station, expected to take 15 years, the Beijing News reported him as telling some 100 high school students from Beijing, Hong Kong and Macau.

But due to financial reasons, China's lunar probe will not send an astronaut to the moon, Wang said.

This is in contrast to previous statements from Chinese officials suggesting the country was hoping to land an astronaut on the moon at some point within the coming decades.

Source: SpaceDaily.com

Looks like China is taking a more realistic approach to its space program, which in a way is a shame as if they were more3 adventurous it may prompt the US to be more progressive and less bureaucratic

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- China plans to build its own manned space station by around 2020 but has shelved plans to put a man on the moon for financial reasons, state media quoted the chief designer of the nation's space program as saying.

edition.cnn.com...

Hmmmm that's rather disapointing. I too was hoping that with China wanting to go to the Moon, that it would get the US Gov't to give better funding for NASA to get there again too. Now there isn't that much modivation for them. Anyone else thing that idea of going to the Moon and Mars is going to slowly fade away?

Originally posted by jra
Hmmmm that's rather disapointing. I too was hoping that with China wanting to go to the Moon, that it would get the US Gov't to give better funding for NASA to get there again too. Now there isn't that much modivation for them. Anyone else thing that idea of going to the Moon and Mars is going to slowly fade away?

It sure looks like it huh? But, hopefully this will get everyone into full gear to explore more. The thing I worry about is what difficulties this will bring if many countries do their own project.... I mean who says who has what rights and allowed to be where when? Confusin huh? ha ha ha It would be best to invite China into the space community and work together on the international space station. I mean with small budgets and all, it would see natural to bring aother nation into the mix.

The exclusion of China into the international space station is because of the fear that China will use the technology for military purpose.

I really don't understand why some people are so paranoid of China. I can't see them attacking the US or the US attacking China. From what I can tell, China is becoming more and more capitalistic. There is a lot of business and trade done between US and China I think. There politics are still on the left, but I think it's slowly moving away from that.

But anyway. I think it could also be good if they joined in with the ISS as well. Every bit helps.

That's right. However the decision is made a decade ago to exclude China. Since then there are lots of changes we should catch on. Now we have two camps working on the planetary space station. China is on one side, all the other countries on the other side. However, at least US astranauts said welcome when they learned China launched manned spaceship successfully.