A nation must think before it acts.
Early in 2003, before the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster claimed the lives of Israel’s first astronaut and six American astronauts, the main headline in the world’s space news for a short time was that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had successfully launched and recovered its unmanned Shenzhou-4 spacecraft. Beijing subsequently announced that sometime late in 2003 it would launch a manned mission into space, making it only the third country in the world, behind the United States and Russia, to do this. Its doing so would mark an important point in the PRC’s progression from a third-world country to an economic and technological power.