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Excuse me, while I touch the sky…

After 68 hours in orbit and a space walk, the Chinese astronauts have returned safely, and the mission can be considered a rotund success.

Spacewalker Zhai Zhigang was the first to emerge and was helped to a nearby folding chair, where he was greeted with flowers and applause and said he was “proud of his motherland.”

You can view Zhigang’s historic space walk here.

2008 has been a year of lights and shadows for China. Good things have happened to them (The Olympic games and this), along with very bad things (toxic-milk scandals, lead-in-toy scandals, floods, earthquakes and the collapse of schools constructed with inadequate materials, political controversy over Tibet, etc). While I’m not one who shies away from criticizing the bad, I nevertheless congratulate the Chinese for this succesful mission, and wish them the best on future endeavours related to the peaceful exploration of space… as long as it stays peaceful.

  1. Change in the air (or is that vacuum of space)
    I wonder, looking back in 50 years, whether this year will be viewed as the one in which China announced itself as the new superpower. The Olympics, massive growth, space travel etc. I’m not sure it’s all sustainable, but China has something on it’s side that many other nations don’t – they can take unpopular measures and not have the government tipped out at the next election (and by unpopular, I mean everything right down the scale to plain nasty). On the other hand, the U.S. seems to be slipping from disaster to disaster, their credibility in the rest of the world is virtually nil (apart from the fact they can nuke us all to oblivion if they want), and when you look at their culture (or, more correctly, all Western culture in general), there’s this descent into superficiality, triviality and apathy.

    Let’s hope whoever takes control of the U.S. after the next election can bring some change, not just to government but to the attitude of the rest of us.

    Kind regards,
    Greg
    ——————————————-
    You monkeys only think you’re running things

  2. Let’s not forget Beijing
    Let’s not forget Beijing running out of water — oh but we have our priorities straight since colonization of space will solve such little trifles like ecological collapse.

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