China's First Spacewalk

Smivs writes "The BBC reports that China will launch its third manned space mission in late September, according to state-run news agency Xinhua. The Shenzhou VII flight will feature China's first-ever space walk, which will be broadcast live with cameras inside and outside the spacecraft. For the spacewalk, two crew members will go into the spacecraft's vacuum module. One yuhangyuan (astronaut) will carry out the spacewalk; the other is there to monitor the activity and assist in case of an emergency. Two types of spacesuits — one made in China, the other from Russia — will be carried up on the flight. It is unclear why China has opted for two different types of spacesuit. Spaceflight analyst Dr Morris Jones commented that China might want to test the suits against each other. Alternatively, he said, it might not be ready or willing to fly a mission exclusively with its own suits."

Comments

Re:Good...

[Daimanta]

"Humans could do much worse than start making the steps to get us off this rock."

I just love rethoric like this. If you call Earth "this rock" you must be really happy that we are walking on "that pebble". This rock provides us with live, that pebble is a bunch of sand and stone and beyond some research, there is pretty much nothing that is of interest to us.

A permanent moonbase is like the war in Iraq: Sure, some profit off it but essentially you are throwing money away.