China's Space Launch Near; Malaysia Wants One, Too

Enoch Root writes "According to an article on People's Daily Online, a Chinese news service, the first Chinese manned space launch is set to take place in the next few days, between October 15th and October 17th. Space.com has an interesting article on the subject, including a satellite snapshot of the Jiuquan, strongly suggesting the imminent launch." And alphaque writes "Malaysia is calling for interested applicants aged 21 and above to be its first cosmonaut aboard the International Space Station. The ability to speak Russian and prior space exploration experience is a definite plus, they say. Applications can be made online at your nearest astronaut recruitment site. Light sabres optional. Now the floodgates are open. Boldly go where no Malaysian has gone before -- to space, the final frontier." Offer is for Malaysians only, though.

Comments

Aldrin recommends US and China cooperate

[apsmith]

Buzz Aldrin has some comments on how we ought to behave in this article. Also note a new position paper on human spaceflight from the National Space Society, and Congres is meeting this Thursday morning (session to be webcast!) to discuss The Future of Human Spaceflight. Should be an interesting week...

space.com

[shadowbearer]

Mozilla/Konquerer on Linux:

Trying to view the image link results in a popup window (in addition to the advertising one) containing this:


Unsupported Configuration

We're sorry, but you're using either an unsupported browser or operating system. Please review our system requirements.

You may still download the player, but must install and use it with a supported system configuration.

Instructions

1) Download the Viewpoint Media Player Installer for Macintosh or Windows.
2) When the download is complete quit all running applications and launch the installer.
3) After installation is complete launch your browser and return to the page that contains Viewpoint content.

Oh, really? Install your proprietary image viewer to look at *pictures* on your website? "Quit all running applications"? Sounds suspiciously like spyware to me...hmm. Google...first link....Yup.

permlink

Yeah, I know, it says "A CUID is never connected to a user's name, email address, or other personal contact information. "

I don't care. There is no reason in the Seven Hells that I should have to install a third party viewer to look at pictures from anyone's website. It's not paranoia; why should I have to interrupt my browsing experience, even once, to install more unnecessary clutter on a system?

Space.com didn't used to be this bad. One more website I won't bother to go to anymore.

Sigh. /end rant

(I couldn't see the image at all in Mozilla, where I had popup off; so I tried in Konq and saw the popup; this note just to head off the people trying to tell me about the anti-popup feature in Moz)

SB

Jiuquan images, no wacky plugins required

[21mhz]

Here and here you can see the image taken on Oct. 4, in a more conventional format.