(BEIJING, Oct 15 (Reuters) - China launched its first manned
space flight on Wednesday and became only the third country to
put a man into orbit.

Lift-off from the Gobi desert was at 9 a.m. (0100 GMT), the
start of a mission that it is hoped will rocket China into the
exclusive space club pioneered by the former Soviet Union and
United States four decades ago.

A Long March 2F rocket called the Shenzhou V -- "divine
ship" in Chinese -- carried a single "taikonaut" named Yang
Liwei, 38, following a trail blazed by Russian cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin and American Alan Shepard in 1961.

"The Shenzhou mission, if successful, will make China the
third nation to send a man into outer space, following the
former Soviet Union and the United States," the official Xinhua
news agency said in a brief dispatch.

State television said later that the spacecraft had entered
Earth orbit.

State media have hailed the spacecraft as China's most
sophisticated.

"The rocket that will launch the Shenzhou V spaceship is
the best of all. It is of superior quality and has stood our
most stringent testing," the official China Daily quoted Huang
Chunping, commander-in-chief of rocket systems, as saying.
"With the application of 55 breakthrough technologies,
including fault-detection and escape systems, the spacecraft
and rocket both have reached advanced international levels."

The weather in the region of the Jiuchuan launch station
was clear, with slight winds and a high of nine degrees Celsius
(48 degrees Fahrenheit), a weather official in Gansu province
said.

A successful mission would mark the crowning moment for a
space programme launched by Mao Zedong in 1958 but which
quickly fell far behind in the Cold War "space race" rivalry
that saw the United States put a man on the moon in 1969.
A year later, China launched its first satellite aboard a
Long March rocket, which orbited the Earth blaring out the
Cultural Revolution anthem "The East is Red."

LEADERS ON HAND
President Hu Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who
revitalised the manned space programme in 1992, were expected
to have been at the launch centre to watch China's bid to
realise a dream that arguably dates back centuries to the Ming
dynasty.

Yang, a lieutenant colonel in the People's Liberation Army
selected from a pool of 14, is the son of a teacher and an
official at an agricultural firm. He was raised in Suizhong
county in the northeast "rustbelt" province of Liaoning.
"We are proud of him," his brother-in-law told Reuters just
minutes before the launch. "We don't worry about his safety
because we trust the nation's advanced technology."

A tight veil of secrecy has blanketed the space programme
and the 58.3-metre-high (191-foot-high) and 479.8-tonne craft.
The rocket was to orbit the Earth 14 times before returning
after about 21 hours. Yang would dine on shredded pork with
garlic and kung pao chicken washed down with Chinese tea, state
media said.

Success would spur China's efforts to emerge on the world
stage marked by more active diplomacy, a winning bid to host
the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and a robust economy.

China invented gunpowder and legend holds that a Ming
dynasty (1368-1644) official named Wan Hu attempted the world's
first space launch. He strapped himself to a chair with kites
in each hand as 47 servants lit 47 gunpowder-packed bamboo
tubes tied to the seat.

When the smoke had cleared, Wan was found to have been
obliterated. But the dream was not. (Reuters)