Ren Xinmin, Pioneering Chinese Satellite Designer, Dies at 101
Professor Sullivan said that Dr. Ren, a specialist in liquid rocket fuels, most likely worked
under Qian Xuesen, a rocket scientist known as the founder of China’s space program.
But Lawrence R. Sullivan, who has studied the history of science
and technology in China and is a professor emeritus of political science at Adelphi University on Long Island, said in a telephone interview that Dr. Ren’s work had a clear military dimension.
"They’re not that much different." Dr. Ren’s death, in Beijing, was announced on Monday by the state-owned China Aerospace Science
and Technology Corporation, which conducts research and development for the country’s space program.
Brian Harvey wrote that China’s Space Program: From Conception to Ma
For Dr. Ren, who died on Sunday at 101, the desert odyssey was just one gambit in a lifelong quest to develop China’s space program.
Zhang Enzhao, a former official at the Academy of Aerospace Propulsion Technology in the central city of Xi’an, said
that on a summer day in the 1960s, he saw Dr. Ren enter an office and wave off a group of subordinates who had stood to salute him.
