According to the plan as stated in the article, China is planning to have its own space station in 2020. By the time ISS is scheduled to retire in 2024 [1], China could very well be the ONLY country who will have space station.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.space.com/24208-international-space-station-extension-2024.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.space.com/24208-international-space-station-exten...</a>
The US should really be looking at cooperating more with China in space. Not wanting to help them with rocket technologies is understandable but there's no reason they shouldn't participate in the international space station or its successor.
Am I the only one that feels that China is helping in motivating the world to put efforts into Space Exploration?<p>Good job on China for pulling this off and helping Mankind.
Why isn't China using its southernmost locations for equator proximity, like the US does? Not enough distance to heavily populated areas?<p>For example, are these islands owned by the PRC?<p><a href="https://www.google.co.jp/maps/dir//21.1143616,115.9785889/@21.1144381,115.9434835,13z/data=!3m1!4b1?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.co.jp/maps/dir//21.1143616,115.9785889/@2...</a>
Missing the old days that US and USSR competing on space and innovating tons of new technologies for mankind. Now what do we got, Snapchat, Instagram, Uber, Airbnb and we call that innovations?
Massively off topic but I hate the BBC's recent penchant for using the main event as backdrop for a piece to camera. Do other countries have to put up with this ridiculous trend?
It's great that China is excited about space. Hopefully, they get soon excited about Nobel Prizes, and basic research. They could easily double the world's output of research.
Very impressive; congratulations to China on another successful manned launch.<p>The article reports that their space budget is $2 billion a year, an impressively modest budget (assuming it's accurate).<p>This should be a kick in the pants to the U.S. to get its own manned space program back in operation, after a hiatus of 5 years.
I wish someone was working on nuclear propulsion technology with Isp of 1000-10000km/s. Chemical rockets are a dead end for space exploration even within the solar system.
It is really amazing what China has accomplished in a short period of time - especially given that the Cultural Revolution sort of threw them back to the stone age.
One interesting observation about what the narrator said at the beginning section of the video:<p><i>"It's not something a journalist is normally allowed to experience in this country."</i><p>I understand that you do not like certain aspects of my country, but do you really need to squeeze in comments like that when covering a spacecraft launch?<p>Edit: It was referring to the visit to the "secret launch base", so it is technically a fair statement. Still, the tone bothers me.