NEVER AS GOOD AS THE FIRST TIME: In a few months, the first manned Chinese spaceflight will blast off. Two or three Chinese astronauts will make a few orbits in a small capsule not unlike the Soyuz or the old Mercury vehicle, and will then drop back in the usual ballistic re-entry. The Chinese are basically re-doing what the US and the Soviets did fourty years ago. Thus, there won’t be much contribution to the overall science of spaceflight. But politically, it will make a billion Chinese people feel good. Before too long, India may do the same thing.

Well, let them have their fun, I suppose. It’s just too bad about all of the time and energy that they used to re-invent the space capsule; it could have been better used in a partnership with a more advanced space program. Maybe the Chinese should have teamed up with Russia to bring back the Buran, the Soviet space shuttle that only made one space trip back in the late 80s (without anyone aboard). The Buran supposedly had some design features that were better than our Space Shuttle, e.g. more cargo room and jet engines for controlled landings. Unfortunately, one of the Burans was destroyed in a building collapse, and the other was sold to some guy who took it to Australia for display, then basically abandoned it.

I hope that the Chinese get a taste of the space euphoria that America had in the early 60s. There was a hit song on the pop radio stations back then called “Telstar“, which basically summed up the excitement. (Actually, two versions; the original by The Tornados and the popular cover by The Ventures). Sometimes you still hear “Telstar” used in a video clip of a rocket blast off. Yes, I hope there will be a pop-hit variation of Telstar in China. Let the Great Kingdom of the East enjoy it, because after they’ve spun their guys around the globe a few times, they’re gonna face the same problem that we now have regarding space: i.e., what next? what for? and how the heck are we gonna pay for it?

(The real Telstar satellite had an ironic ending, as it was accidently destroyed by the effect of a nuclear bomb test here on earth. Also the guy who wrote the song, Joe Meek, committed suicide. Perhaps those were signs of the troubles to come for the overall US space program).

LOST FUTURE: When I was a kid, we expected that by the time we grew up there would be dime-a-dozen wheel-shaped space stations in orbit, a couple of colonies up on the moon, some Mars visits, and at least one or two manned missions to Jupiter under way (recall the movie 2000 A Space Odyssey). But getting people off the planet and keeping them alive in space turned out to be much more expensive than we thought, and unlike computers and other high-tech stuff, the price for spacetravel has not tumbled significantly over the past few decades (back in the 50s, they thought that atomic energy was going to make everything possible, but that sure flopped). So for the time being, the Chinese, the Indians, and whoever else can shoot people up in a tin can to about 150 miles and keep them there for a few hours, but that’s about as far as they’ll get. Until we find some revolutionary new source of portable energy, e.g. cold fusion or anti-matter containment, we’re pretty much stuck in an orbital holding pattern.