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China Preparing To Send Crewed Shenzhou 11 To Tiangong 2 Space Station In 2016
MarkWhittington writes: China has not sent people into space since the mission of the Shenzhou 10 to the prototype space station Tiangong 1 in June 2013. Since then the Chinese have accomplished the landing of the Chang'e 3 on the lunar surface. According to a story in Space Daily, the hiatus in Chinese crewed spaceflight is about to end with the launch of the Tiangong-2 prototype space station in 2016 with the subsequent visit by a crew of Chinese astronauts on board the Shenzhou 11. The mission will be a prelude to the construction of a larger Chinese space station, slated to be completed by 2022.
Not quite. In Firefly, both the Chinese faction and the American faction were strong in space exploration, so the two languages spoken in the new society after the migration were English and Chinese.
In real life, what's going to happen is the Chinese will be the only ones strong in space exploration, while the Americans and their buddies sit around and bitch about how it's a waste of money and how the Moon landings never happened, and when it becomes clear the Earth-of-old is about to die (whether it's climate change or asteroid impact or whatever), the Chinese alone will create generation ships and seek out a new star system, while the rest of us perish as the planet becomes uninhabitable. So the society you saw in Firefly won't ever happen; it'll just be a Chinese-descended society in the new star system. It'll probably strongly resemble the Alliance, but without an actual "alliance" (it's just one power, no alliance necessary), and without any rebels.