from the good-health-and-good-spirits dept.
Chinese astronauts return to Earth after 90-day mission:
Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth Friday after completing the country's longest-ever crewed mission, the latest landmark in Beijing's drive to become a major space power.
The capsule carrying the trio deployed its parachute and landed in the Gobi desert at 1:34 pm local time (0534 GMT).
"It feels very good to be back!," Tang Hongbo told state broadcaster CCTV after the 90-day mission, a record for China.
"I want to say dad, mom, I'm back! In good health and good spirits!" he said after emerging from the capsule within 30 minutes of landing.
The crew of the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft were in good health, China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement.
"The first manned mission to the (Chinese) space station is a complete success," it said.
The taikonauts—as Chinese astronauts are known—will undergo a 14-day quarantine before they can go home "because their immune systems may have weakened after the long mission," Huang Weifen, chief designer of China's manned space project told CCTV.
The mission was part of China's heavily promoted space programme, which has already seen the nation land a rover on Mars and send probes to the moon.
[...] "The successful completion of the mission... paves the way for future regular missions and utilisation of the (Chinese space) station," said Chen Lan, an independent analyst at GoTaikonauts, which specialises in China's space programme.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @11:02PM (1 child)
At least until the US Space Force nukes them back to Earth.
(Score: 1) by Mockingbird on Sunday September 19 2021, @11:33PM
Already seen the TV series [wikipedia.org]. Steve Carell and John Malkovich are great!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 19 2021, @11:13PM (1 child)
Wait until The Party starts cutting costs!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday September 20 2021, @02:58AM
Because it totally ever happened until now in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @11:53PM
In 90 days, you can emigrate from Haiti, walk to Texas, and get sent back by Joe Biden. As Biden said to Kamala: "Fucking Haitians are just as bad as Afghani civilians, but you can't use drones on them."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @12:40AM
People spin around the FLAT Earth but cannot pierce the heavens. They can lick my balls.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Monday September 20 2021, @01:51AM (5 children)
Call me old fashioned, but when *anybody* completes a successful space mission I feel good about it. The spirit of the Apollo-Soyuz mission needs to be kept alive.
Silly question--how hard would it be for people onboard the Chinese space station to play networked games with people on the ISS? Of course they could relay through Earth stations, but the latency would suck. I'm guessing that the orbits are seriously out of sync, perhaps even to the point where rescue and/or transfer from station to station would be difficult and that would cause difficulty getting signals directly from station-to-station too.
Of course I can google all this, and probably will later; but does anybody have a decent answer off the top of their head?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Monday September 20 2021, @02:13AM
https://www.astroviewer.net/iss/en/position-css.php [astroviewer.net]
https://www.astroviewer.net/iss/en/index.php [astroviewer.net]
Make some adjustments to their orbits, and maybe they could fly relatively close to each other for hours and get decent latency.
The problem isn't coming up with some peace gesture. It's about solving the underlying political issues and repealing the Wolf Amendment [wikipedia.org]. Not likely given all the posturing over islands, hacking, and events like this [businessinsider.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by tavares on Monday September 20 2021, @02:29AM (2 children)
Call me a ditto head, but I agree. Any manned exploration is good, even if it's not my most favoritest government doing the exploration.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @04:48PM (1 child)
Agreed. Getting a permanent presence in space (looking at you, 3M, Mars Mining and Manufacturing ;)) is a humanitarian good. It expands the territory and resources and redundancy of our species as a whole.
There will, undoubtedly, be plenty of time to fight over Emperor Musk's Martian empire. Maybe them vs the Chinese outpost. Future looks interesting, if we're willing to expand off this rock and its very limited resources.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @11:00PM
》 if we're willing to expand off this rock and its very limited resources.
Resources weren't very limited when there were only 2 billion people. Next pandemic will fix that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Monday September 20 2021, @07:09AM
Especially one where the humans are more than just dead weight.