China Develops a New Generation of Rockets, Large Enough to Launch a Space Station

China's ambition seems to be surpassed only by the number of inhabitants, when it comes to space exploration. The official state media reported plans to develop a new generation of carrier rockets having the largest payload capacity ever, able to launch a space station into orbit.

China is the third country, after the United States and the former Soviet Union, to put an astronaut in space in a space shuttle "Made in China," in 2003.

Two months ago, China's surprising launch of a missile that hit one of its own retired satellites, blasting the spacecraft into thousands of shards of space junk sparked an international outcry over anti-satellite weaponry.

Somebody's been playing with big boys' toys, and we know how excited boys can get when it comes to their toys. I'm sure they're not trying to overcompensate for anything, since there are more than two billion of them!

The Chinese Long March series of carrier rockets will have a payload capacity more than two times larger than the current one, from 9.5 tons to 25 tons in order to advance the country's lunar exploration program, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing an official with the state-run China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.

The new generation of carrier rockets will have a large enough payload from which to launch a space station, Xinhua said, citing Huang Chunping, a Chinese aerospace expert.

"Space technology reflects a nation's overall power and is an important facet of the modernization of national defense," said Sun Laiyan, chief of the China National Space Administration.

An ambitious project, it comes as proof of China's recent economic boom, showing the technological advances made possible by the new vision of the political regime in the 21st century, and an eventual lunar landing, not attempted for decades, will further show China's "rise" as a superpower.