To Become Third Country With Humans In Space

Far from the secretive way this whole thing started, China is starting to open up its brand-new launch facility in the Gobi Desert to visitors and media.

The launch facility in the hidden city of Jiuquan is indeed a showcase. "Our launch center is simply the most beautiful," the Beijing Morning Post said in a headline of thick black-and-red Chinese characters. Colorful pictures released by the government showed a gleaming, rocketlike metal sculpture and blood-red flags lining a road into the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province.

The Zenzhou mission is set to launch Wednesday night, but the secrecy that has enshrouded China's space program still cloaks many aspects of the event. China isn't saying how many "taikonauts" will go into space Wednesday for what is scheduled to be a 14-orbit mission. But they do talk about how pretty the launch site is.

Jiuquan is in the Gobi desert, near an ancient, crumbling section of the Great Wall. The city has been a center of space research since 1958, when Mao Zedong ran China and his insular approach to governing made sure the country was far behind the Soviet Union and the United States in what was then called the "space race."

The government's Xinhua News Agency, in a dispatch from Jiuquan, described streets lined with lamps shaped like rockets and spaceships. It described red willows and multicolored bushes along the avenues and said the Ruoshui River, which runs through town, has helped turn Jiuquan into "an oasis ... with unique scenery and a pleasant environment."

The cost of China's space program is reportedly staggering in a country where the average worker only makes $700 a year. For that reason, observers say the Chinese manned spaceflight program is cutting corners. Qi Faren, chief designer of the Zenzhou ("Divine Vessel") program, was quoted by the China Daily as saying he and his colleagues were confident about the mission despite the fact China had so far conducted only four unmanned test flights due to "limited funds."

FMI: www.cnsa.gov.cn