China’s Space Lab Launch Closes Gap With U.S. Dependent on Russian Rockets

[Purveyor]

By Ben Richardson and Simone Baribeau

China launched its first space laboratory module yesterday in a step toward a manned station orbiting Earth, two months after the final shuttle mission halted the U.S.’s ability to put people into orbit.

The Tiangong-1 blasted off 9:16 p.m. local time, according the official Xinhua News Agency. President Hu Jintao watched from the control center in Beijing and Premier Wen Jiabao was at the launch site in Jiuquan, Gansu province. The liftoff is part of a program that aims to put a man on the moon by 2020 and, together with high-speed trains, the Beijing Olympics and the world’s biggest nuclear-power expansion, serves as a marker for the nation’s emergence as a global power.

“China sees space as one of the things that will confirm ‘we’re now on a par with Western countries, we’ve entered the club,’” said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington who specializes in technology and security. “It’s prestige, it’s catching up with the West and it’s exploring ways to overcome the U.S. information advantage.”

Yesterday’s launch helps cement China’s lead over emerging nations such as India, Iran and South Korea that are pumping money into matching rocket and docking technology pioneered by the Soviet Union and U.S. five decades ago. As China expands, the U.S. is scaling back on routine manned missions: President Barack Obama last year scrapped plans to return to the moon, setting a goal instead of making a “leap into the future” of deep-space travel.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-29/chinese-launch-of-space-lab-module-aims-to-close-technology-gap-with-u-s-.html

[drm604]

1. It's a shame they haven't joined in with The U.S. and Russia.

We could have 3 countries combining their resources in one space station.