

Letter from China: A Heavenly Palace Moment - tokenadult
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2011/09/a-heavenly-palace-moment.html

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tokenadult
From the submitted article: "But a key step to getting that space station will
be docking with an unmanned spacecraft in November. And perfecting that
docking technique became the preferred joke on the Chinese Web on Friday, in a
week in which China’s great-leap technological ambitions were battered by a
subway crash in Shanghai. 'The orbital docking issue was has already been
solved by Shanghai subway drivers!' a Chinese commentator wrote."

Some headlines have hailed this launch of an orbiting (and eventually manned)
space station module by China as a major technological feat, but it remains to
be seen if a manned space station will be just as much of a money pit for
China as it has been for the United States, Russia, and their partners in the
current International Space Station. Other details from the Chinese press in
the submitted article are interesting.

