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China Plans 5-day Manned Space Mission
rune writes "Both the BBC and The Register have articles on China's next manned space mission. This time two taikonauts are planned to be on board the Shenzou VI spacecraft sometime during 2005 for about five days. There is also a brief mention of the plans of the Chinese Space Agency for lunar exploration." hrld1,kon adds a link to this article on Chinaview, the official English-language news source for the People's Republic of China.
Well, there's always room for improvement. I'm sure they'd like to send more men up with less rocket booster than we could do 40 years ago. I bet they've already caught up to where we were in the '60s; after all, they've been making ICBMs for a long time now, they claim.
As for the instrumentation, they make a lot of chips in China, but I think they're all consumer-grade, not radiation-hardened. Nowadays they should be able to collect a lot more data on the ship and its performance than we could get during the Apollo era.
See what I've been reading.
Actually, far less power than a 486. It was a 15-bit CPU (8K RAM, 64K ROM) with a memory cycle frequency of only 83 kHz.
The word taikonaut is not used in Chinese. The Chinese word for astronaut is yuhangyuan, and the official English term used in Chinese media is "Chinese astronaut".
It's good to see that China and India are getting their feet dirty in the Space Race. More information about India's Space program can be found at www.isro.org and its previous achievements can be found at http://www.isro.org/programmes.htm I wish them good luck. I just hope that China's Space program be as open as India's
Um, no. Just because the Russians beat the US and English-speaking world to space does not mean the word was there first.
In fact, the first recorded use of "cosmonaut" was in 1959, while "astronaut" was first recorded in 1929. Check the OED before you make silly, easily disproven statements.
I'm getting scared. TVs, computers, LCD displays, mp3 players, and nearly every other kind of high tech device is made in China. Now they're leading the "new wave" into space.
If the Yuan ever floats (which would be due to economic/legal reform in China), then I believe that it would quickly fall in value compared to the US dollar, and the trade issues would change. I don't think that the current fixed exchange rates are sustainable as China's economy becomes a good fraction of the US's economy.
The other issue is the question if China's current growth rate is sustainable -- many predict it is not sustainable in the short term. Judging by the actions of the Chinese in regards to their money supply, they also believe that the current growth rate is too high.
Currently, China has a strong economy, especially in regards with most of East Asia, but with the gov't interference, and the above issues, it will be an interesting future for them.
motorola makes PPC 603/604 based cpus for sats these days.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
No, I think that you'll find that the English translation "cosmonaut" of the much older Russian word is what you're talking about: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was talking about cosmonauts in his native Russian in the 19th century.
Check history more thoroughly before you make silly, easily disproven statements.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
And I'm also certian that the US didn't just complete the first non-government manned space flight and doesn't have billions of dollars going to develop private space flight.
Virgin is a British company, not a USA company.
No western nation would commit themselves to it because of enviromental reasons. Also, rumor has it that the new Chinese dam was poorly constructed while billions of unused chinese dollars were rerouted to the corrupted in office.
Life is not for the lazy.
The word "taikonauts" is invented by western media. If you check the Chinese media websites, they use "astronauts" for the English term.
Example: Xinhua news international (this is their government news agency so you can't get much more "official" than this)
What the official Chinese media call their astronauts
Here is a posting of mine on this topic. China has already approached the US and been rebuffed.
an ill wind that blows no good
And I'm also certian that the US didn't just complete the first non-government manned space flight and doesn't have billions of dollars going to develop private space flight.
Actually, the Virgin group of companies is British...
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker