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China Sending Two People Into Space
henrypijames writes "As reported widely in Chinese media, China has began production of and launch preparations for it's new Shenzhou ("divine ship") 6 spaceship. While being roughly equal in design to Shenzhou 5 which sent the first Chinese into space last year (although having capacity for three persons), Shenzhou 6 is supposed to carry two "Taikonaut" next year."
"Shenzhou 6 is supposed to carry two "Taikonaut" next year."
I bet the people on the space station were getting tired of american and russian food. I never had taikonaut but its probably good...
Hopefully this will get the US to start a space race with China! Just to make sure, everyone tell Bush that if China gets a man on Mars first, that proves that the president of China has a bigger penis than the president of the US.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I notice that nothing is said about bringing them back.
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Shenzhou 5 which sent the first Chinese into space last year (although having capacity for three persons), Shenzhou 6 is supposed to carry two "Taikonaut" next year."
They are sending two people so that they can drive the carpool lane. (HOV lane) !!
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Hopefully this will revive the manned spaceflight programs all over the world, preferably in the form of true collaboration and not just let's-all-keep-reinventing-the-wheel kind of silly competition.
We need to get off this planet sooner or later and unmanned probes won't do that.
The owls are not what they seem
snippet from Wikipedia's listing for the Shenzhou - lots more in the link!
Design
Like the Soyuz, the Shenzhou consists of three modules; a forward "orbital" module, a reentry capsule in the middle, and an aft service module. This division is based on the principle of minimizing the amount of material to be returned to Earth. Anything placed in the orbital or service modules does not require heat shielding, and this greatly increases the space available to the spacecraft without increasing weight as much as it would if those modules were also able to withstand reentry.
The orbital module contains space for experiments, crew-serviced or operated equipment, and in-orbit habitation. The reentry capsule contains seating for the crew, and is the only portion of the Shenzhou which returns to Earth's surface. The aft service module contains life support and other equipment required for the functioning of the Shenzhou. Two pairs of solar panels, one pair on the service module and the other pair on the orbital module, have a total area of over 40 square metres, indicating average electrical power over 1.5 kW (three times that of Soyuz and greater than that of the original Mir base module).
Unlike the Soyuz, the orbital module was equipped with its own propulsion, solar power, and control systems, allowing autonomous flight. In the future the orbital modules could also be left behind on a Chinese space station as additional station modules. In the unmanned test flights launched so far, the orbital module of each Shenzhou was left functioning in orbit for several days after the reentry capsule's return.
I hope china builds a nuclear powered rocket like some of the designs discussed at http://www.nuclearspace.com/ . Then the defence industry in the US would overide the environmentalists.
Just like a submarine, its crazy not to use nuclear.
Funny? I know I'm not the first to speak up, as I have been beaten to the punch, but still--where do the moderators get off moderating this racist drivel as being funny? Mod me as a troll or redundant or whatever other crap you may, but when things like racism are funny while standing up for a sense of respect and tolerance for other cultures goes unnoticed or is determined to be trolling... that's just sad.
They're a bunch of circus clown, and putting priorities like that above their nation's welfare shows how much Chinese leaders are disconnected with the reality of their country.
Here goes my karma, but its worth pointing out that exactly the same allegations can be levelled at the current administration of the USA. How precisely has the expenditiure of over $100 billion for the war in Iraq helped the nation's welfare?
Certainly, the war it may have advanced the geopolitical goals of the administration -- much like China's space race will advance the geopolitical goals of their administration. However, the war has done nothing to advance the USA's welfare.
I'm very much in favour of China's forays into space; I think the USA can only benefit from having a competitor in space. Its not coincidence that the US manned space program has declined heavily since the height of the cold war.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
So two Chinese, seven Americans, and a Russian were flying in space...
In case you were wondering like me ...
"Taikong" is a Chinese word that means space or cosmos. The resulted prefix "taiko-" is similar to "astro-" and "cosmo-" that makes three words perfectly symmetric, both in meaning and in form. Removing "g" from "taikong" is to make the word short and easy to pronounce. On the other side, its pronounciation is also close to "taikong ren", the Chinese words "space men".
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
Bomb them all from the moon! We must not allow a mine shaft gap!
The Custom Mary
As someone who grew up in China I have some insight into the welfare of the Chinese people. In short: it could get a lot better. But that doesn't mean China shouldn't go into space.
We went to war during the great depression. A war that wasn't directly against us (until Pearl Harbor). Should we have? We had millions of starving Americans.
When we went into space we still had people without jobs and without food. Today we have people without jobs and without food. Why are we doing anything but feeding them?
Because that's not how economies work. If China can develop a computer industry jobs will come. If china can develop a science industry jobs will come.
If China just spent its time trying to feed its people then no one would get fed and the government would collapse. You have to make the economy boom and then move on from there. For instance, people are doing a hell of a lot better today then they were in 1979 or even ten years ago. Why? Because China invested in its markets and in its economy and in its peoples sense of national pride.
BTW, China is nothing like the USSR. The USSR never had the world's fastest growing major economy. It certainly never had it for years running as China has.
China can afford going to space. They shouldn't get consumed by it; but I doubt that is what is happening. There is still a lot more money outside the space race than inside the space race.
So they are paying a little for some national pride, so what?
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
I hope you realize that there's more people in the US today without medical insurance than there were in the USSR during the space race? That there's now more people in the US not receiving a reasonable education than in the USSE back then?
It's your "We're awesome, so we have the right to kick ass, everyone else doesn't really deserve it" attitude that made the US a lot of enemies...
Oh, and before you mod this as flamebait, maybe at least try to make an effort to prove me wrong!
The space program could have a good return on the Chinese living standard. This pumps government money in the economy, accelerates progress and gives the citizens a 'pride'.
The space program is not a lot of money in comparison of the government budget. It wouldn't improve life of the citizens much anyway.
And the USA is doing the same financing a very expensive war with a very bad budget and huge dept. Read my sig to understand the effect of the national debt.
Iraq: war to save the U
bah!
Russia has a 40-year-old soyouz, China has the most advanced manned space ship.. and America has NOTHING to put man into space!! only useless shuttles that are a dysmal failure.
Yeah, tell that to the chap sleeping on the streets outside my doorstep, the people begging on the subway, the wretched homes in the Bronx and New Jersey, people living in shantytowns all over the midwest, south, etc.
Oh yes, "welfare" is only a dirty word if the US Government says about it, no?
Really -- assuming you're an american and have been brought up in the American way of thinking -- do you seriously think the government can "provide" a standard of living to a billion people? No government has that kind of money. You improve the standard of living by stimulating the economy and creating jobs. You do that, in part, by spurring science and technological research. The post-war defence and space programmes are a big reason for the US's economic superpower status today. (You also need a market economy, which the USSR didn't have, but China's developing one.)
... as space is the ultimate high ground on military thinking and United States is publicly touting to build space-based weaponry to maintain supremecy.
This is just the beginning of next arms race, even India is building nuclear attack platform in space.
Arms control is dead, welcome new instability.
By rest of the world I did mean the USSR and US.
You failed geography, didn't you?
Post about china and watch how american act like americans on slashdot.
I'm not only from europe, no, I'm also deeply impressed by your "funny" (+5, Troll) and your "Insightful" (+5, Flamebait) posts.
Truly a great moment for the american karma and how the rest of the world shall interpret it.
The USA is less rich than it appears. A lot of the high lifestyle that even the lowest classes live is all financed on consumer debt. People are already reaching their credit limits. Once people can no longer finance new things, they can't purchase new things, and you know where that leads. Like any venture financed with debt, it must return enough to more than compensate for the cost of servicing the debt. As consumer tend to only buy things which don't make money, they're taken on huge amounts of debt that will reduce their buying power for many years to come.
The only difference between the USSR and the USA is that the debt is riding more on the individual consumers in the US. Either way, the people owe lots. The US hasn't provided a decent standard of living for its quater billion citizens.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
"All your planets are belong to us!"
I'm not sure what they teach in history classes these days. The US went to war only after Pearl Harbour. Until then, which means when France and most of Western Europe had been occupied and the Nazis had been at Britain's doorstep for several months, the US was neutral---precisely because the war "wasn't directly against us".
... with only one landing module designed for three people...
(someone has to come up with an ending now)
You can't handle the truth.
Standard of living is an ends in itself (well, maybe for Americans), it's a measure of quality of life potential. However, quality of life can be raised by factors other than increase of income; factors such as a better environment or more available technology.
You don't try and feed a billion people by having them all sustinence farm -- you have a few of them farm and a few of them build fertilizer to help the farmers and a few of them build computers to help the chemists build the fertilizer to help the farmers and a few of them to build shiny things to trade for resources the engineers need to build the computers to help the chemists build the fertilizer to help the farmers. And how do you get better at building shiny things? Go to space.
Good point, although the reason the US enacted the embargos was because they were planning for the inevitability of war with Japan. It could also be argued that the embargos were effectively an act of war just as OPEC cutting off US oil supply would be today.
And Yamamoto's intention was that Pearl Harbor would destabilize and demoralize the US enough that when they entered the war they would not be able to quickly pose a threat. The reason he was authorized to do this was because of the embargo.
Ever hear of inflation?
25 billion in 1963 dollars is 143 billion in 2002 dollars.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I would suppose that the 5-7 day mission is meant to "test the waters", as it were, and perhaps to set a milestone, have the taikonauts talk to school-children, etc. The first few times that the USA and USSR put manned capsules into orbit, they did nothing more than orbit and re-enter. However, that's been done a lot (technology is proven, etc), so the Chinese may have to skip the orbiting for the sake of orbiting's sake and get right to work on whatever-they'll-do.
G. M. Manath
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both 'Yes' and 'No.'
Simple Math: about 300 million people in the US total. (280 or 297 or something as of the last census) 27 is about 30. Now divide that out: 1 in 10 people in the US is a child living in poverty. For the sake of ease in math lets assume that the current life expectancy is 80 (it is about 76 last I checked) and define child as anyone 20 or less (close enough to 18). Which means 1 in 4 people in the US is a child. Combine that with 1 in 10, and that means half the children in the US are living in poverty! (Yes I rounded, but there is a spike in the US population of the baby boomer years, so rounding down to 1/2 makes more sense than up 1/3 in this case)
In short: I don't believe your numbers. They just don't fit in with the US I know.
Well, "divine ship" (or "devine vessel" as some have called it) is only a western interpretation of the word "Shen-Zhou", and a stereotypical one at that. "Shen" can also mean magic as well as divine, and "zhou" can mean boat, vessel or ship.
We as westerners, are all caught up with the image of the Chinese as mystical people selling us Mogwai/Gremlins and rubbing ground rhino horn into their heads each morning. This is just not true. I'd say most Chinese would prefer to translate "Shen-Zhou" as "Magic Boat/Ship". I mean, the Chinese for Aladdin's Magic Carpet could also be translated as his "Divine Floorcovering"; it doesn't really work, does it?
- Oisin
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