Hi EP, <<successful space mission>>
Yes, appreciate the thought. As Mr. Yang said, “I feel fine” :0)
In the small picture, I saw the landing on China Central TV 4 (HK cable TV carries several mainland channels, in addition to HBO, Cinemax, CNN, CNBC, BBC, DW, Star TV … Japan … Korea … Thai …), and the big picture messages all say “we are back” :0)
This mission appears to be the beginning of the beginning, a start to a new age of exploration, to be followed with modular permanent space lab, space walks, lunar landing probe/rovers, Mars manned mission, and journeying towards a new world.
The mission follows in the wakes of oceansonline.com after an interruption due to a nearly fatal mistake, marking a way-station buoy on the way to TeoTwawKi, at an affordable annual cost of USD 2 billion (serial production of the equipment will apparently halve the current cost of 2 billion, and thus allows for more activities/equipment at the same annual cost).
Imagine, space exploration at 1/10th the global standard cost, at current exchange rate, and since the companies involved in making the hardware are mostly publicly-listed entities (Domestic A-share market, 40-50 times earnings), commercialization will be a practical aim, for space tourism and for export of space faring equipment and services.
I would suppose, now with the historical lessons well-absorbed, the folks in Beijing will not lightly abort the cosmo-voyage effort midway as the emperor did back in the Ming dynasty ;0)
The outline of TeoTwawKi is now becoming a bit clearer, looking more like the world that once was, a world of adventure, exploration, civilization, human values, peaceful coexistence, and non-interference ;0)
Sounds like the world of Star Trek and Captain Kirk, or, for that matter, Admiral Zheng :0)
Chugs, Jay |
