big science and the transits of venus 123
project, as examples of conspicuous consumption. To illustrate this point,
in the first section of this chapter I offer a short review of the international
reaction to China’s 2003 space launch and the possible reawakening of the
race to space. I then move to a theoretical discussion of Big Science proj-
ects, defining the concept and examining alternative explanations. I end
with a review of the international race to observe the transits of Venus
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a case study of conspicuous
consumption.
A New Race to Space?
On the morning of October 15 , 2003 , the Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou V
blasted off from the Gobi Desert, carrying with it China’s first astronaut,
Yang Liwei. Yang circled the Earth fourteen times before safely landing,
twenty- one hours later. Yang’s brief space adventure was the first step in
an ambitious Chinese manned space program that includes plans for a
manned moon landing by the year 2020. With this launch, China joined
Russia and the United States as the only nations to have sent humans
into space; China could now “stake its claim as one of the world’s elite
space- faring nations” (Yardley 2003 ; Solomone 2006 ). Pundits were quick
to frame the Chinese space program as a prestige policy (New York Times
editorial, October 19 , 2003 ). Yet this assertion is not self- evident. Why
should a Chinese space program, culminating in a space launch that repli-
cates forty- year- old scientific and technological achievements, add to Chi-
na’s prestige? If anything, such an expensive manned space program must
be reducing available Chinese resources for the development of more prac-
tical contemporary technologies. In many ways, China’s neighbors and po-
tential rivals could have found great solace in Yang’s historic flight; after
all, the Chinese seem to be spending their resources on showy space tour-
ism rather than improving satellite capabilities or revamping their obso-
lete command-and-control capabilities. Nevertheless, the response to the
Chinese flight promptly framed the event in competitive terms.
In neighboring Tokyo, the headlines of a leading newspaper were quick
to portray Japan as “Shocked at Being Placed Way Behind,” relying on
positional terms and neglecting to remind readers that Japan could prob-
ably have launched such a flight years ago had it chosen to do so (edito-
rial, New York Times, October 19 , 2003 ). In India, a neighboring power
with an ambitious space program of its own, the Economic Times tried to
