Editorial
China's walk in space
It is a new point in human experience
ZHAI Zhigang joins a small yet illustrious company of individuals who have been to space. The achievement takes a somewhat bigger dimension considering that the Chinese astronaut has just taken a walk in space, the first Asian on a specifically Asian space programme to do so. The credit surely goes to China, which has through the space walk entered that most hallowed of clubs --- that of nations which have sent their men and women out into space in search of wider meanings to life and what lies beyond. At a time when the Chinese are basking in the glow of the just-concluded Olympics in Beijing and yet are quite battered by the milk scandal that has had global ramifications, this space success will be balm to a bruised ego.
In a wider sense, the Chinese achievement in space adds new substance to the gains that have already been made in the programme of exploring the world beyond ours. Perhaps, for many, this new space walk may not be an exciting affair, given that man landed on the moon nearly four decades ago when the American Neil Armstrong stepped gingerly on lunar soil. But more sober reflection will surely bring up once more the long, often tortuous tale of how mankind first made its trip into space before expanding the dreams associated with such travel. The unmanned Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. In a Cold War era, it was enough to get America seething, get it riled enough to begin thinking of challenging that communist triumph. John Kennedy, having entered the White House in 1961, promised Americans that same year that America would send a man to the moon and have him safely back to earth before the decade was out. That was when the space race commenced. Soviet cosmonauts (Gagarin, Tereshkova, et al) competed with American astronauts (Glenn, Bormann and others) in a dazzling show of human ingenuity. Along the way, tragedy happened. Space travellers on both sides perished. But such sadness was forgotten when Apollo 11 landed in the moon's Sea of Tranquillity in July 1969.
The rest is history. The Chinese have just added a new page to this history. We, as Asians and as part of the larger human landscape of human experience, offer them our congratulations. As Archibald MacLeish would say, we are brothers on the earth together. One man's space walk is mankind's collective triumph.
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