Well, as Galileo goes out, it's time for the manned Chinese space program to come in. I will start a countdown here, assuming that the earliest possible launch date for Shenzou 5 would be October 1.

14 days, 5 hours to launch of first Chinese astronaut (taikonaut),

Whenever you make a post in this thread, include the time to the possible launch at the end of it.

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"Too low they build, who build beneath the stars". - Edward Young, 1745

That's good.. now if we'd launch to the moon with the CHinese, and maybe we wouldn't be so mad at NASA, but we wouldn't do that, would we? (Plural is me and a friend) Oh well, I wonder what a good reason is



14 days 1 hours 25 minutes

I don't think we'd want to launch to the moon with the Chinese. I mean, not with the Chinese. Not at the same time from the same launch pad. Two launch vehicles would kinda get in each others' way.



12 days, and ... um ... some-odd number of hours

Thanks for starting this thread! :-)

I'll see if I can dig up information and post as time goes by.

How did they get the term "taikonaut?"

Hmm. The most recent launch stats for the CZ model are better than I thought. In any case, I'll have my fingers crossed for them.

I assume it is the chinese equivalent of "astronaut" and "cosmonaut". 8)

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Taiko = Heaven