Thunderbirds are GO!

I really enjoyed watching the pictures of last week's Shenzhou 7 space mission. It brought a lot of childhood memories flooding back. I was obsessed with "the space programme" as a kid (my much older brother had some great books from the early days, all the Mercury and Gemini and early Apollo missions of the '60s, which I read and re-read umpteen times); I was an avid viewer of the last Moon missions, Skylab, and the development of the Space Shuttle; I committed to memory practically all the facts and figures in The Observer's Book of Space Flight; and, of course, I read a huge amount of science fiction.

This was China's third manned spaceflight - and the first on which they actually felt confident enough to show the launch live on television (at 9.10pm Beijing Time last Thursday).

Ahem. There was something not completely convincing about these pictures. The shots of the rocket in flight all looked like generic library footage from previous launches. And the shots of it on the launchpad (especially that brief shot of the base of the rocket, in the last few seconds before they fired up the engines) look suspiciously like a model.

Oh, I know, it's probably just a trick of perspective, an unfortunate combination of the harsh, flat lighting and the sheer monumentality of the structures that makes them look lacking in fine detail and gleamingly plasticky. But it seems to me that those Saturn V blast-offs back in the '60s and '70s always looked much more impressive, much more real. Maybe they just knew how to light the launch tower better for good TV pictures. Maybe they were savvy enough to intercut with a lot of close-up footage, where the violence and enormity of the rocket engines could not be in doubt. Or maybe it's just my memory playing tricks on me.

I don't for a moment suggest that there was any problem with Thursday's launch (much less that the whole mission was a fake!). But it does seem rather too plausible in a country like this that they wouldn't actually take the risk of showing a live launch on nationwide (and worldwide) TV, and would prepare suitable footage in advance.

This is what happens when you fake your fireworks display for the Olympic Opening Ceremony - nobody completely trusts anything your TV stations broadcast ever again.