from Hacker News

China launches second trial space station

by RyanMcGreal on 9/16/16, 12:34 PM with 80 comments

• by Tepix on 9/16/16, 2:10 PM

  Interesting quote from the BBC article:

  > If all this makes you worried about China's long-term cosmic ambitions, then you are not the only one.

  I think it's dumb that China is not allowed to participate in the ISS.

• by quirkafleeg on 9/16/16, 1:50 PM

  Obligatory nitpick:

  > Yang Liwei became the first Chinese person to go to space

  Should probably be the first Chinese national to go into space. The first ethnically Chinese person in space was Chinese-born Taylor Wang.

  Interestingly, in a pub-quiz question kind of way, the first Chinese-born woman in space was... Shannon Lucid.

• by lucb1e on 9/16/16, 3:00 PM

  > If all this makes you worried about China's long-term cosmic ambitions

  Uh, as a non-American, not more than America's. Why should it?

• by crystalmeph on 9/16/16, 2:03 PM

  The Chinese talk about maybe sending a man to the moon, and they've launched a couple of these space stations, but they've only done 5 crewed launches since 2003, and the last one was 3 years ago in 2013. It seems like China is doing the bare minimum to show that they have the capability, but doesn't actually have any real ambitions in this area.

• by Shivetya on 9/16/16, 9:45 PM

  I figure it this way, the more they invest in space and science to allow for probes to other planets the less they will spend on their military. Now if we could our country (US resident here) to follow suit

• by JumpCrisscross on 9/16/16, 3:22 PM

  > In August, the country launched the world's first quantum satellite, aimed at achieving "hack-proof" communications between space and ground control.

  This is possible now?