Word: launchful
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...knows exactly when the historic launch will take place. China's secretive space commissars haven't divulged such tiny details as the blast-off date?it could be Oct. 1, China's National Day, or sometime in mid-October. Nor have they confirmed the number of astronauts on the mission, although it's likely to be no more than one or two. But with Russia's space program sputtering for lack of funds and America's paralyzed by an emotional debate in the wake of Columbia's disintegration, China's program looks set to become the world's most ambitious...
...Despite the launch's national significance, China has so far released only a modicum of information about the manned maiden voyage. Unlike the seven U.S. astronauts on the pioneering Mercury mission, who became heroes before they even lofted skyward, the identity of only two of China's 14 taikongyuan, or "space pilots," has been released. All that ordinary Chinese know about them is they're each about 1.7 m tall, weigh 65 kg and served as jet-fighter test pilots who "are No. 1 in physical status and psychological quality," according to statements by senior space official Zhang Houying...
...secrecy surrounding Chinese astronauts may be due to the country's less-than-stellar space record so far. In the past the government announced test launches of Shenzhou spacecraft only after they returned, saving itself the embarrassment of having to explain failures. China's satellite-launch program suffered a string of disastrous explosions and aborted launches in the mid-1990s. Although all four unmanned Shenzhou craft have returned from orbit since the first test in 1999, not all were mission-accomplished. The Shenzhou II is widely believed to have suffered damage from a hard landing during a blizzard...
...foremost rocket scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, for being a suspected red. Qian returned to China, helped reverse-engineer a Russian R-2 rocket (an improved version of the infamous German V-2) left behind by Soviet advisers and eventually oversaw the launch of China's first satellite, in 1970. The mission electrified millions of radicals in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, when the satellite broadcast the song The East Is Red back to Earth. Legend has it that technicians pressurized the fuel for those first rockets with a bicycle pump...
...China didn't adopt this go-it-alone approach by choice. It was left out of the 16-nation International Space Station project, which includes space neophytes such as Belgium. China's once lucrative satellite-launch industry has been devastated by U.S. sanctions preventing the country from launching commercial satellites that use American components. And last year, the U.S. refused to grant visas to some Chinese scientists invited to participate in the World Space Congress in Houston, even though several were slated to present papers there. Physicist Sun Huixian was so angry about the American cold shoulder that he ordered...