Chinese Astronauts Return To Earth After Spending Six Months in Space (theverge.com) 42
Three Chinese astronauts, also known as taikonauts, safely returned to Earth yesterday after spending six months aboard China's unfinished Tiangong space station, according to a report from Space.com. This is China's second crewed mission to Tiangong and its longest so far. From a report: The Shenzhou 13 spacecraft landed in the Inner Mongolia desert at 9:56AM local time on Saturday morning after departing from the space station's core Tianhe module about nine hours prior. The crew took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert last October and spent a total of 183 days on the space station. This mission is China's longest.
In addition, taikonaut Wang Yaping made history as the first Chinese woman to visit the Tianhe space station and also became the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk. Wang was accompanied by crewmate Ye Guangfu and commander Zhai Zhigang. The trio carried out a total of two spacewalks, performed various tests around the station, and held two live lectures for students watching from Earth. Shenzhou 13 is part of 11 missions China has planned to finish constructing the Tiangong space station. China first launched the Tianhe module in April 2021 and later sent three taikonauts to bring the station online. As noted by Space.com, the Shenzhou 14 crew is set to depart for the space station sometime in June. China plans on having the station finished by the end of the year, which will include the launch of two additional modules.
In addition, taikonaut Wang Yaping made history as the first Chinese woman to visit the Tianhe space station and also became the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk. Wang was accompanied by crewmate Ye Guangfu and commander Zhai Zhigang. The trio carried out a total of two spacewalks, performed various tests around the station, and held two live lectures for students watching from Earth. Shenzhou 13 is part of 11 missions China has planned to finish constructing the Tiangong space station. China first launched the Tianhe module in April 2021 and later sent three taikonauts to bring the station online. As noted by Space.com, the Shenzhou 14 crew is set to depart for the space station sometime in June. China plans on having the station finished by the end of the year, which will include the launch of two additional modules.
IIS is out of reach for China (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Wikipedia: "China's incentive to build its own space station was amplified after NASA refused Chinese participation in the International Space Station in 2011".
Clearly the Chinese are now eager to compete for the superpower throne and are working hard on getting there own presence in space and some firsts of their own.
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Clearly the Chinese are now eager to compete for the superpower throne and are working hard on getting there own presence in space and some firsts of their own.
And they'll probably land on the moon before NASA gets the SLS flying.
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I am not sure on that "unlikely"....
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To be pedantic, China has already landed Lunar rovers (Yutu series). I gather you mean human landing, I also agree with you there. Indeed, it is possibly (albeit unlikely) that China will start construction of a lunar station before the SLS launches for real.
Yes, I meant "they" as in "they themselves" land on the moon. I'm fully aware of the jade rabbit or whatever it's called lander. Nobody cares about that. Nobody cared about our lunar robots either.
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We should stop this race based competition. Aren't we all in a woke arms race to get the first transgender LGBQT person on the moon?
I think it would be inspirational to have someone host drag time story hour about transgender rights, from the moon.
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www.fark.com/woke
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And they'll probably land on the moon before NASA gets the SLS flying.
I hope so. If China can build a space station and a base on the moon, then perhaps they will take the chip off their shoulder and stop threatening Taiwan.
Heh. (Score:2)
âoeAppear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.â
â Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Evergrande is the tip of the iceberg. Look at what's happening in Shanghai with people starving. [youtube.com] The video does a good job showing the Mao parallels.
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Let China on ISS (Score:2)
There's no reason to keep them off anymore. The technology is already obsolete, and the Russians know about it anyhow and happily share military secrets with China. China can help maintain the ISS, which it sorely needs.
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Why would China want to involve itself with western space programs when they know that any dependency they develop on western space infrastructure will ultimately be used for sanctioning them? I think they've learnt that lesson.
Anyway, their own private and public space programs are running so fast that its hard to keep up with the space news from China. I'm guessing that a decade from now China will be the largest space power by an order of magnitude.
Competitions! (Score:2)
:D
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Indeed. One of the usual effects of embargos: Those so limited will often figure out how to do it themselves. If China had access to the ISS, they would today not be able to roll their own. In fact, they may currently be the only nation that can do something like this entirely by themselves. Great strategic planning by the polit-morons, like usual.
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NASA wasn't allowed to work with the Chinese by a herd of technologically ignorant lawyers in Congress. They attempted to do the same thing with Russia before the launch of the ISS, ban the only country with experience running a space station from participating. Fortunately Clinton became buddy-buddy with Yeltsin before that happened, because without them we would still have to fly the ancient, creaking space shuttles until they failed one by one.
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It's such a shame that the plans for the US and USSR to cooperate on a Moon mission didn't come to fruition. If Kennedy hadn't been assassinated the world could be a very difference place today.
"Taikonaut" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes, I already knew I don't speak Chinese.
Re:"Taikonaut" (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right - "taikonaut" is not a Chinese word. The "naut" part at the end is a dead giveaway . . . but TFA was written in English. Personally, I consider 'astronaut', 'cosmonaut' and (now) 'taikonaut' to be synonyms. I just hope we don't have to get used to franconauts, niponauts, deutschernauts, latinonauts, afrinauts, . . .
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How is the American English word "astronaut" rendered in Mandarin?
Chinese doesn't transliterate foreign words directly the way English does. English is extremely promiscuous at sucking in foreign words and phrases, but most other languages, including Chinese, don't work that way.
In Chinese, an astronaut is yuhangyuan ("space ship crew member"), hangtianyuan ("sky navigator") or taikongren ("space person").
Chinese doesn't use a different word based on nationality, but can add a prefix: "mei-" for American, "zhong-" for Chinese, "eluosi-" for Russian. So "meiyuhangyuan"
It is "Hang Tian Yuan" (Score:2)
The Mandarin for astronaut is Yuháng yuán, or sometimes Tàikong rén.
The official word used is "Hang Tian Yuan".
"Hang" means navigation, compared to "naut" in astronaut
"Tian" means the sky, in this case meant above the atmosphere (see below)
"Yuan" means people or staff (ren yuan), aligning with the common usage for Chinese military and govt staffing.
Although "Taikong" is the chinese for "Space", the story was that the Chinese father of rockets Qian thought that calling people who just going to low Earth orbit "Taikong ren" is too presumptuous, what do we call them when peopl
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Yeah, it seems silly to use different names for "astronaut" in English, depending on the nationality of the person (e.g., "cosmonaut" for Soviets/Russians; "taikonaut" for Chinese). "Astronaut" should be for anyone.
Why are we bringing racism to space? (Score:3)
Stop it! Let's just call 'em all space travelers - even the inert lumps of meat that pay to take joyrides out where there's no air or gravity to speak of. They're space travellers, I don't need to know where their ancestors came from, they're space travellers. If their contribution to space travel was to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide in near-Earth space, we can note that in the record. All it takes to be a space traveler is to go to space - coming back in one piece is cool, too!
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But the original meanings are pretty well lost in what the sixties turned them into. An astronaut is a good guy with the right stuff. A cosmonaut is a Russian imitation of an American astronaut (I didn't hear a lot about the first cosmonaut ever to go to space, but I heard all about the astronauts that finally made it to the moon).
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Surely cosmonaut came first and therefore the correct word for the profession should be "Cosmonaut" in every country.
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Amen.
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Astronaut implies that they had an active role in the mission, i.e. they were not just passengers. That's why Branson and Bezos are not officially astronauts.
So I think "space traveller" isn't quite specific enough, especially now that the ultra wealthy can afford to go as passengers.
Humanity will never reach space. (Score:2)
So much for Roddenberry's vision for our future.
How do you know that person is a woman? (Score:2)
I can't find a declaration of gender anywhere.
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I can't find a declaration of gender anywhere.
Xe is an astronaut. That spacesuit belongs to xem. Xyr launch date is tomorrow. Xe will join the rest of the crew in xyrs capsule. Xe is quite proud of xemself.
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China has, in some aspects, a less broken society than the west. Hence you can still infer gender from the name there.
Not saying the overall "China" package is attractive (it is not), but the west is currently regressing and losing its way in many aspects and becomes less and less attractive every day.