Chinas Space Program
Chinas Space ProgramCHINA CITES ‘GREAT PROGRESS’ IN MANNED SPACE PROGRAM By Daniel Southerland (c) 1986, The Washington Post PEKING - China has made “great progress” in developing a manned space program and the day it launches a man in space for the first time is “not far off,” an official newspaper said Sunday. The overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the leading Communist Party newspaper, said China has “already begun the work of choosing its first team of astronauts.” Although it gave few details, the article made it sound as though China is preparing to launch its first men into space much sooner than many foreign observers had thought possible. “We have already succeeded in producing life-support systems and in solving the problems of controlling gas composition and pressure in the cabin and the level of heat and humidity,” the report said. The report, published Sunday, said the Chinese have developed the largest centrifuge of its kind in Asia and Europe to simulate cabin conditions created by the launching of a spaceship. “The day when a Chinese goes roaming through space is not far off,” the report said. On June 5 of this year, Sun Jiadong, vice minister of astronautics, told reporters that China would put a man into space but that...
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