China’s noisy space plans

China foresees most glorious future in space!

The USSR was notably silent about its plans for space missions. They typically announced their missions afterwords—and boasted about their accomplishments, often achieving “firsts.” They had the first satellite, first man in space, first space walk, first space station, etc.

The U.S. announced plans and then carried them out—at great risk—in sight of the whole word. And, with this approach, they won the moon race. Lately, the U.S. space plans have become muddy as rival political camps fight over NASA’s future. And neither side’s plans seem clear as yet.

But China is interesting. They’ve accomplished some things, though they are still behind the U.S. and Russia. They’ve mounted several manned space missions, only the third country to do so.

Even more interesting, for a communist and usually secretive country is that they talk a whole lot about future plans. In great detail.

They’ve recently selected an additional seven astronauts (they call them taikonauts), including two women.

But, they’ve outlined a whole slew of future manned (and womanned) space objectives…some with dates! And, they’ve pointed out with strangely direct honesty that these objectives will be affected by whether or not they get funded…

Some objectives:

A Chinese taikonaut would (if all goes well) walk on the moon by 2024.

Manned exploration of Mars between 2040 and 2060.

And how about this discomforting goal: a military space station by the end of this year!