HONG KONG -- For those who have labored long and hard to keep China's space program alive and moving forward, it must have been a wonderful moment when, on Oct. 15, the complicated machinery of initiating space travel performed flawlessly, and China scored a first.
The initial man in space in 1961, the Soviet Union's cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, spent one hour and 48 minutes in orbit in the Vostok space capsule. The first American in space, astronaut Alan Shepard, spent just 15 minutes in suborbital flight in a Mercury capsule -- it was John Glenn a few months later who first went into orbit.
But the first Chinese in space, "taikonaut" Yang Liwei, orbited the globe 14 times in nearly 21 hours and 23 minutes. It was a noteworthy debut, even if Yang, like Gagarin, Shephard and Glenn seemed to spend most of his first journey into space strapped in a reclining position.