I find the Chinese attitude both interesting and dismaying. It is similar to one that I experienced with Indian Space Research Organization during the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter mission. When the Chandrayaan spacecraft was running into difficulties after a few months in lunar orbit, the organizational instinct was to deny any problems and be less than forthcoming with the press about the status of the spacecraft. Spaceflight is inherently difficult and things break all the time. It is beyond ridiculous to cover up a problem by pretending that it doesn’t exist. Similar behavior patterns characterized the early Soviet space program, in which we never heard about mission failures, but successes were given widespread publicity. It seems that to date, China is adhering to that model
--------------SPUDIS
Is this true?? Did we(ISRO) really acted like there were no failures...Though its true, is it really that dismaying?? Isn't it the nature of human to boast abt successes and deny failures?? Little bit disappointing with this article of Spudis...Though I still love his writings ;)
Ofcourse, this could be strange to people those who confirmed pockets of water with bistatic rada experiment and later denied it with radar observations of arecebo. Anyways your truthful ness is to be praised here.