RAND SIMBERG: What Are The Chinese Up To In Space? “As milestones go, this could be seen as a small one. After all, China merely performed a feat that Americans achieved more than 45 years earlier (and its space station is about the size of the Salyut 1 Russia flew about 40 years ago). There was a key difference, though: While the first American docking was with a manned Gemini capsule and an unmanned Agena upper stage, the Chinese performed the entire operation with unmanned spacecraft—a feat that the U.S. had never actually performed until recently, and a tribute to the intervening decades of technological development. The question now is: What does China’s recent success say about its goals in space? . . . Chinese leaders openly want to have a manned space station by the end of the decade, and this demonstration is crucial to that goal for two reasons.”