China To Snap 4 Space Ships Into a Station

hackingbear writes "According to a report by Hong Kong newspaper Mingpao Daily (poor Google translation), quoting the Director of Jiuquan Launch Center, China is set to build a space station by snapping together four spaceships (Shenzhou 7, 8, 9, and 10), to be launched sequentially. Though other reports indicates that taikonauts abroad SZ 7 will return to Earth on September 28, the official said the ship will remain in the orbit to be docked with unmanned Shenzhou 8 and 9. Finally, the manned spaceship Shenzhou 10 will be launched and dock with the other three, completing the space station." A story at Space.com also briefly mentions Shenzhous 8 and 9 (with no mention of number 10), and adds that China has selected its first spacewalker.

Comments

Taikonaut, cosmonaut and astronaut

[ccccc]

Does anyone else find the practice of using the foreign-language version of "astronaut" a bit annoying? It seems a bit bizarre.

A Chinese astronaut is... an astronaut. A Russian astronaut is... an astronaut. You'll notice that during the Olympics, Chinese athletes were still called "athlete."

Why arbitrarily translate some words into the foreign language?

Re:Taikonaut, cosmonaut and astronaut

[clarkkent09]

A Chinese astronaut is... an astronaut. A Russian astronaut is... an astronaut.

You mean: A Chinese cosmonaut is... a cosmonaut. An American cosmonaut is... a cosmonaut. After all, Russians used the name cosmonaut first, the Americans user astronaut to be different. Cosmonaut makes more sense anyway, at least until we have a manned flight to the stars

No, No, No!

[TheRaven64]

China doesn't snap space ships together to make a space station, it secretly fits engines to its space station and uses it as a ship and plans to refuel on Europa.

Re:And it cost them how much?

[wcrowe]

This brings up an interesting point. Fifty years ago, we had a similar view of Japan. That is, that they just made cheap little trinkets, but REAL manufacturing was done in the U.S. Then, almost overnight, they began making extremely good quality automobiles, electronics, optics, etc, and did it at less cost. I think we'll soon see the same pattern with China.

Re:independent Orbital/Hab module

[samkass]

The Chinese are not as stupid as you seem to think. Of course they're not going to start from scratch when there is so much historical data, designs, and expertise available for sale right next door. It seems like the Chinese space technology took the best-of-breed (ie. mostly Russian) technology and modernized it using Chinese "indigenous spaceflight capability". I'm not sure why you jumped on this as somehow anti-Chinese, but it strikes me as by far the most intelligent thing to do. (After all, the US is licensing Russian technology to hold us over after the Shuttle retires, and we're not stupid either...)