September 25th marked China’s first spacewalk, as taikonaut Zhai Zhigang ventured outside of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft and made history.

This came during China’s third mission in to space, and the country has now joined America and Russia as space-going nations.

The question of course is why? The Chinese would argue why not? But it’s quite obvious that this has got as much, if not more, to do with politics than it has with space exploration.

We’ve really done everything we can in our own solar system, so until stellar space travel is possible, I have to wonder what the point actually is.