The New Space Race

摘要

For china, the olympics was only first in a summer of national achievements. The glory of gold may have been surpassed barely a month later when the country made a claim to space-age parity with the United States and Russia. After the first Chinese man walked in space, amid a PRextravaganza back home to rival the Summer Games, there was little doubt that China had taken one more step on its long journey to the moon. It was China's third mission into space. If all goes as planned, there will be a space station by 2015 and a Neil Armstrong of their own by 2020. Few doubt China's lofty ambitions. But should its space missions be cause for worry in Washington and Moscow? The Soviet Union performed the first space-walk in 1965 when Aleksei Leonovstepped out of a Voskhod II capsule, and the United States did it later that year when Ed White left his Gemini capsule.