The Economist: Ten, nine, ten…
The Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft with the international crew of US astronaut Kjell Lindgren, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui blasts off a launch pad of a Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 22.
RUSSIA had Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin. In 2003 China put a man in space. Even India is exploring the heavens: last September an Indian probe began circling Mars. Brazil thinks of itself as the peer of these big emerging economies (all are members of the BRIC grouping). But when it comes to space, its efforts are earth-bound. It has put up just six smallish, non-commercial satellites, four built with Chinese help and launched on Chinese craft.
