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Space Science

Chickens Hatch Aboard Chinese Space Module 21

Posted by timothy from the tastes-like-Âû dept.
Buzx writes: "It seems China is closing in on her goal of joining the small club of space-faring nations. Three chickens hatched aboard a Shenzhou space module after seven days in orbit. This reminds me of the U.S.'s experiments with monkeys (anyone remember Ham?) and the USSR's space dog, Laika."
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Chickens Hatch Aboard Chinese Space Module More

Chickens Hatch Aboard Chinese Space Module

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  • With any luck, this will trigger a new space race.
    The US has become far too complacent, and Russia is pretty broken right now. New competition may mean that we'll actually get off this rock before it gets hit by an asteroid or something.

  • some *CHICKS* in space!!!

  • eggcellent! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Prowl ( 554277 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2002 @12:51PM (#3402539)
    Did they carry out any Eggstra Vehicular Activities?
  • It seems that China sent up 9 chicken eggs, but only three hatched. And of course, as is China's want, they are keeping ominously quiet about what became of the other 6 eggs. I get kind of annoyed about their tendency to never admit their failures, no matter how minor, unless someone else breaks the story first and they need to do some damage control.

    They're using the survival of the eggs to tout their life support system. But for all we know those other eggs came back scrambled, or horribly mutated into monster chickens. If they want the rest of the global community to be impressed with their space program, they ought to be a little more forthcoming with their data, success or failure.
    • Most chicken eggs do not hatch into chickens (This is the origin of the advice, "don't count your chickens before they hatch"). Further, there's no guarantee that they'd hatch at all, given the G-forces of launch. Racism aside, this is an honest acheivement for a country making its first steps into space.
      • Some more interesting info from media within China:
        • That native species of chicken is called "black chicken", light coloured feather, black skin, ordinary colored flesh.
        • This type of chicken was selected due to two reason:
          1. genetically stable and well-studied in China
          2. The eggs are smaller, so that they can fit more to the container.
        • They do mention the failure ones and are quite happy with the 3 out of 9 hatches.

    • Their space program can hardly be considered a failure because they didn't manage to hatch 6 eggs...
  • wonder how the chickens taste like. I know for a fact that chickens in other countries taste better than ones in the US, but I doubt that the space chicken in the Chinese satellite would taste better than the ones in the US satellite.
  • I think they're trying to create boneless chickens by taking advantage of the loss of bone mass in space.

  • NASA used pigs to test dry-land touchdown: Mercury Pig Capsule [friends-partners.ru]

    --Blair

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