'Shenzhou' to Become 'Public Coach' between Heaven & Earth

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, April 12, 2002

'Shenzhou' to Become 'Public Coach' between Heaven & Earth

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" 'Shenzhou' spaceship is going to be a means of conveyance between heaven and earth in the future, namely a shuttle-bus between the earth and the universe," said Qi Faren metaphorically, chief-designer of the Shenzhou III spaceship, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering when he was giving an appraisal of the spaceship.

With hoary hair the senior astronautic expert expressed, the manned astronautic project and spaceship China is carrying out is not its ultimate purpose and the research and launching of the spaceship is in the service of space-station to be established in the future when he accepted the interview of the reporter in his office.

"Shenzhou III" Launched

China launched another unmanned spacecraft, "Shenzhou III", 10:15PM March, 25, (Beijing Time) from Jiuquan Satellite Launching Center of Gansu Province, and ten minutes after blast-off, the spaceship entered its preset orbit. In Detail>>>

"When China's space-lab is set up in universe, the Shenzhou spaceship is going to play two major roles." Qi Faren said, one is to use it as a "public bus" shuttling between the heaven and the earth, sending persons from the earth into space and carrying those back onto the ground. Secondly, it is used as an emergency system with the spaceship to moor by the side of the space-lab to play a role of a life-vessel for carrying the lab-personnel back onto the earth in time if necessary.

Speaking of the returned and collected "Shenzhou III" spaceship, Qi said of them merrily in a dearly and natural tone as though talking about his own children. As he introduced the "Shenzhou III" consists of 13 subsidiary systems: system for astronauts, effective carrying capacity system, electric-supply system, propelling system, guided-navigation and control system, meter and lighting system, structure and organization system, heat-control system, environment control and life guarantee system, monitoring and communication system and emergency life-saving system and landing and retrieval system as well as digital data management system. "During the flight, all systems are working in a fully manned condition." The examination shows that the spaceship has come up to the requirement of a manned one and in this sense, the "Shenzhou III" spaceship would have made a successful flight and return to earth if it was manned.

"As a chief-designer of the spaceship the first target for me is to ensure the reliability of the ship and safety of astronauts," said Qi Faren, "and in order to achieve the absolute safety for astronauts it won't do to make a rush." For "Shenzhou" spaceship to carry astronauts, he said, it still needs times of flights to find out problems through experiments and appraisals. Problem may be exposed with time and again flights and we can make improvements of it so as to examine the original design, thereby increasing the safety and reliability of the spaceship.

The former USSR made seven times of trial launching before it began to make a manned flight while the USA had 21 times of trial launching. The purpose is all for finding out fully the shortcomings, unsafe and unreliable factors in order to make improvement. "China may not need so many times as they did but we have to make necessary experiments!" According to the "Shenzhou III" it still needs at least two to three times experiments before it can make a real manned flight into the space.

Qi Faren said, the "Shenzhou III" spaceship consists of several such modules as returning, orbit, propelling and accessory section. The returning module is designed to take three astronauts. The orbit module is used for daily life and work of the astronauts, which are recently used for space-navigation and carrying out all sorts of scientific experiments while in a long run for a coupling-target during the spaceflight. The propelling module provides the ship with power and electricity and will be cast off when the ship returns into the atmospheric sphere and the accessory section is seen with all kinds of meters and will in a long run be installed with equipment for coupling up in the universe. He pointed out the robot in the returning module is a set of equipment and meters for the experiments of controlling the interior environment in the module and a system for ensuring the life of the astronauts. It consists of three parts, namely an installation for metabolism, simulating the breath of a human-being, another a simulated equipment for health monitoring and medical service, imitating the heart-circulation system of a human-being and the third is a mimic person, imitating a man's weight, mussel tenacity and joints activities. And in the mimic is also installed with a set of equipment for sensing the dynamic coefficient of impact and shock and the great amount of data gained are now being processed.

During the spaceflight the astronauts can have everything needed as to eat and rest and in an environment of loss of gravity "they can open their mouth to eat and stretch out their limbs to clothe themselves," said Qi Faren jokingly. The "never-wet diaper" on sale in the market now was in its initial period meant for temporary ease of the astronauts in a short-time flight and now it's of no use because they can use the toilet instead.

China, though starting late in the research for space-navigation, is from a higher level. Qi Faren said, the "Shenzhou III" is equal to that of the Russia in the middle of 1980s and is more spacious than the "Soyuz TM" spaceship of the time. But what is more is that it bears China's special feature that the orbit module can be kept on for operation in the orbit.

The "Shenzhou IV" will be more or less the same as "Shenzhou III", i.e. in a fully manned situation but with a great variation of the contents in the orbit module for scientific experimentation. As to whether "Shenzhou IV" will carry some animals for test, Qi said, it's absolutely unnecessary. As revealed, according to the arrangement of China Manned Spaceflight Project the research work of "Shenzhou IV" is in an active preparation and is expected to be set off soon.

By People's Daily Online

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