
travel in deep space and wave at the stars
A laudable ambition (which I share) but I am prepared for disappointment, if the stars don't wave back.
Three taikonauts have successfully launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and are on their way to the Tiangong space station. The mission crew was only announced yesterday, and is made up of experienced taikonaut Cai Xuzhe, 48, and two relative beginners: former Air Force pilot Song Lingdong, 34, and Wang Haoze, 34 …
“And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” Neitzche
Given his life history one might suspect: he did and the abyss obliged.
The poor bugger really was away with the pixies and completely gaga at the end.
There is something Lovecraftian about mindless eyes gazing out of the abyss...
First time I have encountered taikonaut for a PRC astronaut. Seems a peculiar coinage: the taiko part is apparently Chinese (Mandarin) for "space" and the nauta part from the Greek for "sailor." Given that astro and cosmo are also both from Greek and I would also hazard that Mandarin has a word for a sailor, I wonder why not use a fully Mandarin coinage?
I also note that India have vyomanauts but probably less discordant as Sanskrit probably has some prototypical form of naut given Greek and Sanskrit are members of the same language family.
Despite Bill Nelson's sabre rattling I don't think that any nation in the foreseeable future and much longer, could build a lunar facility that could forcibly maintain a territorial claim to the moon. A lunar base is just too vulnerable to the forces of nature let alone the hostile actions of an adversary. You would need to maintain superiority above the moon from a fleet of orbiting stations and if you could do that then you could just as easily do the same above the earth to blockade your adversaries.
Here, as I am, sitting in “the West” I hear very little about the Chinese space programme.
Reading the Wikipedia page, achievements so far are nothing less than impressive.
Since “China's incentive to build its own space station was amplified after US Congress prohibited NASA from any direct engagement & cooperation with CNSA”, it looks like they have carried on quite nicely, thank you, possibly even better than if they actually had engaged with NASA.
Come on Western media, more about the Chinese space programme please!