CHINESE SPACE PROGRAM China has a highly-developed space
program. Most rockets are launched from the Taiyuan Satellite
Launch facility in the Gobi desert in Shanxi province in
northern China or the Xichang Launch Center in southwestern
Sichuan Province. Manned space flights take off from the Jiuquan
launch site in the Gobi desert in Gansu and land on the plains
of Inner Mongolia. The Xichang facility is where many of China’s
satellites are launched. It encourages tourists to come and
watch launches and has its own museum. The are plans to build a
combined launch facility and theme park on a 3,000-acre site
Hainan Island that will open in 2012. China reached a major
milestone when it launched a man into space in 2003. In the
beginning it saw space flight as a means realizing military
ambitions and achieving economic development, using satellites
for things like finding oil and fertile land, monitoring weather
and choosing places to build roads and railroads. Later it saw
space exploration as a way for the Beij