Welcome to Project 921
It's the start of something new. I'm successfully blogging on my space-related site, Lagrange 5, and now I'm resurrecting the first blog I attempted. I quickly gave up on this one (on April 16, 2004, at around 4:30 a.m.) when I tried to publish to my homepage on Prohosting and the FTP settings weren't playing nice.
The name for the blog, Project 921, comes from the code word for the Chinese manned space program. The numbers represent the date, September 21, 1992, when Chinese premier Jiang Zemin gave a speech urging a serious effort to pursue a national space program.
So why did I choose this name, Project 921? Well, I'm interested in spaceflight, and I still have a little boy's fascination for forbidden, secret things, and classified military projects are interesting. In war and peace, national secrets are kept, lost, and uncovered, and help decide the balance of power among adversaries.
China's space program is a national interest, a matter of military pride. Its manned space program was classified, but for whatever reason, it wasn't a very well kept secret. Nevertheless, the Chinese worked quietly on their manned space program, insisting on building its own infrastructure and launch hardware without significant outside partnership. They wanted to be able to say they did it on their own. And eventually, they would.
Their national pride still couldn't keep Chinese authorities, in an eleventh hour decision, from preventing live TV coverage of its first manned launch, for fear of a catastrophic, widely public failure. It was about control. They wanted to be able to present a heroic story, or maybe no story at all, just in case the news was grim.
Their first attempt was successful. In October 2003, China sent an astronaut into space, and became only the third country to launch a man into orbit.
Project 921 represented the goal of spaceflight for one country, and the name of this blog merely reflects my interest in a robust spacefaring society around the world.
The name for the blog, Project 921, comes from the code word for the Chinese manned space program. The numbers represent the date, September 21, 1992, when Chinese premier Jiang Zemin gave a speech urging a serious effort to pursue a national space program.
So why did I choose this name, Project 921? Well, I'm interested in spaceflight, and I still have a little boy's fascination for forbidden, secret things, and classified military projects are interesting. In war and peace, national secrets are kept, lost, and uncovered, and help decide the balance of power among adversaries.
China's space program is a national interest, a matter of military pride. Its manned space program was classified, but for whatever reason, it wasn't a very well kept secret. Nevertheless, the Chinese worked quietly on their manned space program, insisting on building its own infrastructure and launch hardware without significant outside partnership. They wanted to be able to say they did it on their own. And eventually, they would.
Their national pride still couldn't keep Chinese authorities, in an eleventh hour decision, from preventing live TV coverage of its first manned launch, for fear of a catastrophic, widely public failure. It was about control. They wanted to be able to present a heroic story, or maybe no story at all, just in case the news was grim.
Their first attempt was successful. In October 2003, China sent an astronaut into space, and became only the third country to launch a man into orbit.
Project 921 represented the goal of spaceflight for one country, and the name of this blog merely reflects my interest in a robust spacefaring society around the world.
posted by Administrator at 3:29 AM
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