THE FLEDGLING DRAGON: CHINA'S HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT PROGRAM

摘要

For China, the path to human spaceflight has been as long and winding as the path in a Chinese garden. The Long March rocket that lifted People's Liberation Army Air Force Lt. Col. Yang Liwei into orbit on October 15, 2003 and made China the third nation to launch its own citizens into space was also the culmination of the third Chinese program with that goal. Twice before, China's leadership had started and abandoned human spaceflight programs. Project 714, started in 1971, actually selected and started to train a group of 19 taikonauts (the Chinese name for astronauts) for flights in a capsule named Shuguang, but this project was cancelled just one year later, a victim of as yet inadequate technological foundations and the social upheavals of Mao's Cultural Revolution. A second program from 1978-1980 proved equally abortive. In 1984, President Reagan offered the Chinese a seat on the space shuttle, but the Challenger accident put an end to those plans. It was only in 1986 that the Chinese Academy of Sciences finally proposed a program which gained traction as Project 921 and evolved into the Shenzhou program whose flights we are witnessing today.