Driving back from dropping Patricia off at the airport this morning, I was listening to Bill Handel on KFI, and they were joking about the upcoming Chinese manned launch. Their attitude was basically, it’s a Chinese version of John Glenn, forty-plus years too late. Big whoop (amidst lots of crude and dumb jokes in Japanese accents–you know, “velly solly,”–they apparently don’t know the difference).

Despite the hopes of some for a return to a space race and a vibrant space age that never really was, I think that this will be the reaction of the public at large as well.