Both Mingpao and the semi-official China News Agency on Wednesday (July 5) quoted unidentified aerospace authorities in China that the country would likely conduct three or four more unmanned test launches of the capsule before the "real" manned flight would be launched in about two years. This puts the timeline of the first manned mission in 2002.

The reports reaffirmed comments made by various officials soon after the historic Shenzhou launch last November.

On November 22, 1999 after the opening of an international remote sensing conference in Hong Kong, Gong Huixing, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Tong Qingxi, an academic from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, both told the local press that the first manned flight would have to wait for the completion of a few more unmanned capsule test flights in two to three years.

The biggest concern was to ensure the safety of the yuhangyuan ("astronaut").

Gong, who participated in the development of Shenzhou between 1992 and 1994, mentioned that China encountered many problems in developing the manned-rated launcher, the Changzheng-2F rocket.

The problems Gong outlined include:

• China had never developed a launcher of such a large scale.
• An assurance to yuhangyuan a fast bailout from the launcher in case of an emergency.
• The need to establish an infrastructure of substantial scale that includes the launch range, and a coordination centre for testing and maintenance.

The reasons for the shorter timeline were cost and a more skillful team available to the project, according to this official.

"From an economic point of view, the cost of test launches are expensive and China cannot afford too many tests. Also China has a high quality technical team so the testing period is significantly shortened."

Training For Spaceflight
Gong also revealed that China had long ago arranged different organizations to train yuhangyuan. However, before the manned space program was approved and confirmed in 1992, several generations of yuhangyuan trainees had retired.

"Currently the program is still recruiting personnel to conduct training. If the [manned orbital] program is successful, perhaps an attempt would be made to land [yuhangyuans] on the Moon and Mars," said Gong.

In today's (July 9) Yangzi Evening News, the Nanjing newspaper discloses a few basic yuhangyuan selection criteria. In addition to excellent health and psychology, yuhangyuan candidates must be between early 20s and 45 years old; not taller than 1.75 m; weigh 80 kg or less; have a Bachelor or advance degrees in engineering and sciences such as biology, physics or math; speak at least one foreign language; and is a certified pilot with over 1000 hours of flying experience.

According to reports published on November 22 last year in Mingpao and Sing Tao newspapers in Hong Kong, China began yuhangyuan selection and training as early as the 60s. An early large yuhangyuan training base, the Chinese Aerospace Centre (CAC), was built in the western suburb of Beijing in 1968, but very few people knew about its existence.

CAC has since expanded and occupies a very large area. The Centre is divided into five areas and has several space environment simulation test facilities to train yuhangyuans on launch, on-orbit and reentry operations.

The current generation of yuhangyuans were selected from among the best fighter pilots. All of them have undergone training at CAC. However, two yuhangyuans, the most likely candidates for the first Chinese manned mission, were sent to the famed Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia, for additional training.

Simulation facilities essential to yuhangyuan training include hyperbaric and hypobaric chambers, a hypothermic chamber, a life protection system experiment chamber, a rotating chamber, the largest centrifuge in Asia, and a landing impact drop tower.

To simulate the pressing load during launch, yuhangyuans enter a cylindrical tower over ten metres tall and are subjected to a downward force equivalent to several times of gravity at surface.

In some of the simulation chambers, scientists study how yuhangyuans adapt to environment of varying pressure, humidity and temperature. Some studies may last several days or even months in complete isolation from outside contact. These are severe tests to the psychology and physical fitness of the yuhangyuans.

Toward the end of the training course, yuhangyuans experience simulation of the landing impact of the reentry capsule. The simulation is carried out in a four-story high landing impact drop tower.

DRAGON SPACE

The Shenzhou capsule shortly after landing

China Prepares Second Manned Capsule Test
by Wei Long
Beijing - July 4, 2000 - China is busy preparing the second flight of its manned space capsule, the Hong Kong newspapers Wen Wei Po and Mingpao report today (July 4).

According to Wen Wei Po, the pro-Beijing newspaper, unidentified sources in the space program revealed that the second manned capsule would be lighter than the Shenzhou capsule, which was successfully tested in the unmanned maiden flight last November.