China to send two into space in Sept.

www.chinadaily.com.cn...

Well it looks like China is going to send two people into space for a 6 day mission this september or in october. If this mission goes well, they will move onto space walks and spaceship docking. The space walks are scheduled for as early as 2007.

China also wants co-operation with the US with there space programs. This should those people who were worried about China militarizing space at ease.

There is broad space for China and the United States to collaborate, such as in space technology applications and space science -- including exploration of outer space, Sun said.

He stressed more understanding between the two is paramount, since there is some misunderstanding in the United States that China might try to acquire space technology for other purposes.

Sun said such speculation is totally groundless, noting the country has always relied on itself and developed space technology independently.

Well i'm looking forward to China's launch this september/october and I also to see the co-operation between them and NASA.

I glad to China getting into space hopefully they can offer NASA alittle friendly competition and help NASA gets its manned programs back into gear. I noticed soon after China showed a plan to put a man on the moon the US talked about going back.

One question though are the Chinese called Cosmonauts or Astronauts?

They are called Taikonaughts I believe, not sure if thats spelled correctly though...

From the wikipedia:

The term taikonaut is sometimes used in English for astronauts from China by Western news media. The term was coined in May 1998 by Chiew Lee Yih from Malaysia, who used it first in newsgroups. Almost simultaneously, Chen Lan coined it for use in the Western media based on the term "tàikōng" (太空), Chinese for space. In Chinese itself, however, the term yuhangyuan (宇航員 yǔháng yuán) ("space navigator") has long been used and refers to astronauts and cosmonauts. The closest term using taikong is a colloquialism tàikōng rén (太空人, literally space human) which refers to people who has actually been in space. Official English text issued by the Chinese government uses the term "astronaut."