The docking mission is the latest show of China's growing prowess in space, alongside its growing military and diplomatic presence - at a time when budget restraints and shifting priorities have held back US manned space launches.
Beijing, however, is still far from catching up with the established space superpowers: the United States and Russia.
Docking techniques such as those which China is only testing now were mastered by the United States and Russia decades ago, and the Tiangong 1 is a trial module, not the building block of a space station.
Russia, the United States and other countries jointly operate the 400 tonne International Space Station, to which China does not belong. But the United States will not test a new rocket to take people into space until 2017, and Russia has said manned missions are no longer a priority.
长江后浪推前浪。。。世上新人赶旧人作者: lzh47 时间: 2011-11-3 22:55:50
TVNZ有什么资格去评论？作者: virus 时间: 2011-11-3 23:00:11
The space program is not very transparent at all,” said Morris Jones, a space analyst based in Sydney, Australia. “The Chinese have an obsession with secrecy when it comes to their space program.”
The Tiangong 1, the module already in orbit that Shenzhou 8 docked with, has two large telescopes directed at the Earth that can photograph anything on the surface. These are probably used for some military purposes, Jones said.
Experts agree that China’s current space technology is about the level of the U.S. in the 1960s-era Gemini program. While not exceeding U.S. space technology, China does have the political will and money to support an ambitious space program, said Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. in September.Despite the lag in technology, China advances more with each launch.
“Within only seven or eight years, China's space experts have completed what their foreign counterparts took three to four decades to achieve,” said Wang Yongzhi, chief designer of previous Shenzhou craft, according to the New China News Agency.作者: la_ka 时间: 2011-11-3 23:00:48
