Wednesday, October 1, 2003
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- The countdown has started, the capsule is ready and China is preparing sometime -- at least before the end of the year -- to launch its first man into space.
If succesful, the launch will grant China entry to an elite club making it only the third nation after Russia and the United States capable of putting humans into space.
Of course, as any space historian knows, Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space.
His 1961 flight aboard a Soviet Vostok space capsule, catapulted the former air force pilot into the history books and set alarm bells ringing in the Western world that the final frontier was about to turn a very communist shade of red.
But was he really the first?
Several centuries earlier -- legend says about 1500 AD, sometime around the middle of the Ming Dynasty -- a Chinese stargazer named Wan Hu dreamed of going where no man had gone before and set out to turn that dream into space age reality.
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