The programme had opened – inevitably – with a tribute to the unknown inventor of the rocket, somewhere in China during the thirteenth century. The first five minutes were a high-speed historical survey, giving perhaps less than due credit to the Russian, German and American pioneers in order to concentrate on the career of Dr Hsue-Shen Tsien. His countrymen could be excused, in such a time and place, if they made him appear as important in the history of rocket development as Goddard, von Braun, or Koroylev. And they certainly had just grounds for indignation at his arrest on trumped-up charges in the United States when, after helping to establish the famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory and being appointed Caltech's first Goddard Professor, he decided to return to his homeland.

The launching of the first Chinese satellite by the 'Long March 1' rocket in 1970 was barely mentioned, perhaps because at that time the Americans were already walking on the Moon. Indeed, the rest of the twentieth century was dismissed in a few minutes, to take the story up to 2007 and the construction of the spaceship Tsien.

The narrator did not gloat unduly over the consternation of the other spacefaring powers, when a presumed Chinese space station suddenly blasted out of orbit and headed for Jupiter, to overtake the Russian-American mission aboard the Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. The story was dramatic – and tragic – enough to require no embellishment.

Unfortunately, there was very little authentic visual material to illustrate it: the programme had to rely largely on special effects and intelligent reconstruction from later, long-range photo-surveys. During their brief sojourn on the icy surface of Europa, Tsien's crew had been far too busy to make television documentaries, or even set up an unattended camera.