Joseph Riggs wrote:
- 'Long March' rockets? They just can't get away from their 'glorious
political history'.
The rockets, in terms of technology and organization, has been the
same unbroken program started and named in 1965, before the Cultural
Revolution. I really don't see any reason to rename it. Along with
May 4th, defeat of Japan, the Long March is one of the few great
political events of CCP history that retained all of its glory (unlike
the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution etc). Literally
(stripping its historical/political colors), it's also a very suitable
name for rockets.
If you take an unbiased look at CNSA, they have done exactly the
opposite of Western stereotyping. All the major programs are given
apolitical names. The Moon program is Chang'e (Moon Fairy), the GPS
program is Beidou (Polaris), the spaceship is Shenzhou (Divine
Vessel), the weather sats are Fung Wan (Wind-Cloud, but in common
usage it means "historical climate" or even "Wind of Change", also the
name of a HK martial arts comic series). Not a single name from
recent decades have any political colors. Chang'e, and Shenzhou, are
mythical and would be considered "reactionary" by the CCP old guards.
But even the names from the Cultural Revolution era are split between
political (Long March and East Is Red) and non-political (Pragmatic
and Far Sight).
Sorry to disappoint you.
Also Chinese are extremely deliberate about every aspect of every
name, the femininity of Chang'e is probably used to counter masculine
or neutral names of Western space projects.
- Lunar orbit is 'Deep Space'? o.O
Mostly a lost in translation issue.
term. What did catch my eye, though, was the satellite navigation system.
From what's
described, it's difficult to tell if it's a better way to move satellites
around in orbit, or if it's
intended to be a competitor with the GPS system. The latter is run by the US,
and it's
widely recognized that the US and China are going to be at least
semi-competitive in the
Wow, I guess it's not well known in the West. The Beidou is
absolutely a competitor to GPS, along with EU's Galileo and RU's
GLONASS. There's no "semi-" in the competition between US and China.
Face it, Galileo's founding partners (UK, FR, DE, IT) are all
strategic military allies of the US, yet they found it worthwhile to
dump billions of euros to duplicate GPS. The justification for China
to build their own is unquestionable.
What's interesting is that China is double-dipping: China is also a
paying partner of Galileo.
--
Dr. Core
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