ONE GIANT STEP FOR CHINA
These children could be visiting the moon, Mars and Jupiter by 2050 if China’s space programme succeeds. But what are its government’s real ambitions — and should the rest of the world be worried?
Michael Sheridan
The Times, October 18, 2009
Any day now, at a hidden airbase in the forests of northeast China, a panel of doctors and air-force officers will make the final choice of the first Chinese woman to go into space. When that happens, she will step out of the shadows of military secrecy to become the most famous woman among 1.3 billion people.
We can guess a little bit about her identity. She will be one of the 16 women who graduated in April as fighter pilots to join an elite band of China’s “top guns”. She has made it through the most daunting selection process on Earth — 200,000 women between 17 and 20 years old applied for the aviation course, but only 35 made it to China’s Air Force Aviation University outside Changchun, a city near the borders with Russia and North Korea. The first 16 graduates are the best of the best.
The chosen woman will have three years to prepare herself for a mission to a Chinese space laboratory that may take place as early as 2012. Chinese scientists have disclosed to the state media that volunteers, including university students and parachutists, are already submitting themselves to rigorous tests to establish how men and women differ biologically in space.
The winning candidate will have to be very close to physical perfection, according to doctors at No 454 Hospital of the People’s Liberation Army in Nanjing. “These astronauts could be regarded as superhuman,” said Shi Bing Bing, an official at the hospital. Members of the medical team, one of five around China screening male and female aspirants, let slip that even bad breath could rule out a person. So could ringworm, a runny nose, allergies, tooth cavities or a history of serious illness in the past three generations of their families. Not one surgical scar between head and toe is to be permitted.
The Chinese are also pursuing studies by other nations that have put women into space — Russia, Japan, the US, South Korea — indicating that a zero-gravity environment may have less physical impact on women astronauts. Then there is the unique Chinese psychological perspective. “Women are better at handling loneliness in space, where you can only hear the buzzing sound of machines,” said Pang Zhihao, a researcher with the China Academy of Space Technology.
Nobody is talking about it in the state media, where all is grandeur and heroism, but a military attaché in Beijing suggested that the selection process will go beyond the bounds of what Nasa would dare to do. “From the Korean war to the cultural revolution, the Chinese military became the world’s experts on psychological torture, isolation, brainwashing and breaking down mental resistance,” he observed. “A candidate who survives the kind of tests they could devise is superhuman indeed.”
(...) [artículo aquí]
These children could be visiting the moon, Mars and Jupiter by 2050 if China’s space programme succeeds. But what are its government’s real ambitions — and should the rest of the world be worried?
Michael Sheridan
The Times, October 18, 2009
Any day now, at a hidden airbase in the forests of northeast China, a panel of doctors and air-force officers will make the final choice of the first Chinese woman to go into space. When that happens, she will step out of the shadows of military secrecy to become the most famous woman among 1.3 billion people.
We can guess a little bit about her identity. She will be one of the 16 women who graduated in April as fighter pilots to join an elite band of China’s “top guns”. She has made it through the most daunting selection process on Earth — 200,000 women between 17 and 20 years old applied for the aviation course, but only 35 made it to China’s Air Force Aviation University outside Changchun, a city near the borders with Russia and North Korea. The first 16 graduates are the best of the best.
The chosen woman will have three years to prepare herself for a mission to a Chinese space laboratory that may take place as early as 2012. Chinese scientists have disclosed to the state media that volunteers, including university students and parachutists, are already submitting themselves to rigorous tests to establish how men and women differ biologically in space.
The winning candidate will have to be very close to physical perfection, according to doctors at No 454 Hospital of the People’s Liberation Army in Nanjing. “These astronauts could be regarded as superhuman,” said Shi Bing Bing, an official at the hospital. Members of the medical team, one of five around China screening male and female aspirants, let slip that even bad breath could rule out a person. So could ringworm, a runny nose, allergies, tooth cavities or a history of serious illness in the past three generations of their families. Not one surgical scar between head and toe is to be permitted.
The Chinese are also pursuing studies by other nations that have put women into space — Russia, Japan, the US, South Korea — indicating that a zero-gravity environment may have less physical impact on women astronauts. Then there is the unique Chinese psychological perspective. “Women are better at handling loneliness in space, where you can only hear the buzzing sound of machines,” said Pang Zhihao, a researcher with the China Academy of Space Technology.
Nobody is talking about it in the state media, where all is grandeur and heroism, but a military attaché in Beijing suggested that the selection process will go beyond the bounds of what Nasa would dare to do. “From the Korean war to the cultural revolution, the Chinese military became the world’s experts on psychological torture, isolation, brainwashing and breaking down mental resistance,” he observed. “A candidate who survives the kind of tests they could devise is superhuman indeed.”
(...) [artículo aquí]
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