This volume explains the beginnings and expansion of China's space program, analyzing how China is now able to hold such ambitions and how the interaction between technology, politics and economics has influenced the Chinese space program.

It opens by tracing out the earlier development of the space program and identifying the successes and problems that plagued this initial effort, later focusing upon its development over the past decade and into the future. As China is now able to reach into outer space with its machines and, since 2003, with its humans, the authors examine how...