Chinese Taikonauts Arrive at Launch Facility

CylonSlave writes "It seems the recent rumors about China's first manned flight occuring in the next couple of weeks may be for real. Spacedaily.com reports (courtesy of AFP) 14 Chinese trained taikonauts have arrived at the launch facility in Gansu province in Northwest China. Earlier space.com and one of the Chinese state's news organs, the People's Daily, reported on the possibility of a manned flight next month. Note that this Wednesday, October 1, is China's National Day. This mission would be titled Shenzhou 5 being the fifth mission with the Chinese made Shenzhou space capsule. Personally, I hope the competition will jolt the US space program back into more visionary ideas such as the manned Mars mission. Two sites about China's space program can be seen here & here."

Comments

On board the spacecraft...

[stienman]

This mission would be titled Shenzhou 5 being the fifth mission with the Chinese made Shenzhou space capsule.

Among other instruments onboard, they will be deploying the world's first open relay SMTP satellite, usable with a directv or primestar dish and a common 802.11a/b/g bridge.

Later 2005:
In other news, a Chinese satellite exploded over asia yeasterday. Authorites are investigating, but an unnamed internal source indicated that the "... server couldn't handle the 3 billion emails per second ..." that apparently up until yesterday were flowing through the relay.

Next day:
Microsoft is claiming victory as hundreds of US Spammers declare bankruptcy.

-Adam

Overheard...

[Captain Splendid]

"...hey, I can see the Great Wall from here!"

In the News: Chinese Austonauts Injured in Mishap

[jameskojiro]

Late thursday 200 miles over Bejing the first Chinese Austonauts in orbit suffered a mishap involving a saftey drill aboard their Shenzhou Spacecraft.

Program manager Mr. Chin Hou stated today that the in flight combustion safety drill ended in tradegy today when the Astonauts in an attempt to perform this manuever opened the pressureized door of their spacecraft and attempted to perform a space walk around the vessel and then return to the confines of their craft.

Mr. Chin Hou later regretted that they hadn't allowed for the fact that when the tests were performed on the ground no one mentioned that there was a vaccum in space. "The Taikonauts in orbit in orbit did not have the nessassary equipment to perform the spacewalk manuever and they suffered from exposure in space as a result," Mr. Chin Hou went on.

The Chinese space agency has reported that they will not schedule any more fire drills aboard their spacecraft until they are equipped for spacewalks and the astonauts are in their suits before such drills are performed in the future.

In other news a Russian based Linux distribution is sueing SCO for infringment.