China's rocket man

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Qian Xuesen is widely celebrated in China as the father of the country’s rocket programme, and the man who kick-started its exploration of space. China is now second only to the US in terms of its dominance among the stars. But Qian also had an important part to play in the early scientific advances, before World War Two, that would eventually take the US to the moon. However, he is almost entirely forgotten by the country that nurtured his talent for decades, before anti-communist persecution sent him back to China, the land of his birth. Kavita Puri traces the rise and fall - and rise again - of an extraordinary life.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Some podcasts are about the news,
0:04.0	some podcasts are about politics and science and history,
0:09.0	but my new podcast for the BBC World Service is about losing the man I loved.
0:18.0	It's called Goodbye to All This and you can find it by searching for goodbye to all this wherever you get your podcasts.
0:27.0	A young ambitious and fiercely bright scientist is sitting in his office in California.
0:35.9	He overhears colleagues puzzling over a complex mathematical problem.
0:40.7	He's busy but looks up. He can't help himself and joins in their conversation.
0:46.0	The small group of scientists will change the course of space history
0:52.0	and his role is key. If you're in America, it's unlikely you've heard
0:56.8	of him, but if you're in China he's a well-known national hero. This is the BBC World Series. National Hero.
1:05.0	This is the BBC World Service. I'm Kavita Puri with the extraordinary story of Chian Chusen.
1:11.0	He is widely known as the father of Chinese rocketry, a figure that everybody in China knows.
1:18.2	And his achievements are recognized in stone.
1:22.0	I had an opportunity to visit the Chiang Juyersen Library. It has been
1:27.0	designated by the central government as one of the official sites for patriotic
1:31.9	education.
1:33.0	One of the first things you will see is this gigantic actual missile in the middle of the building,
1:41.0	several stories high, and that's one of the early missiles he helped develop.
1:49.6	missiles that fired China's first satellite into space under Chairman Mao in 1970.
1:56.0	China was aiming for the stars.
1:59.0	It now rivals America for dominance in space.
2:02.0	Last year it was the first country to land on the far
	...

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