[Eug Wanker]

Chinese astronauts blast off

A rocket carrying the Shenzhou 6 capsule and two astronauts blasted off Wednesday from the remote base in China's northwest. In a break with the space agency's typical secrecy, the launch was shown live on Chinese state television.

The mission, reportedly due to last up to five days, is a key prestige project for China's communist leaders, who have justified the expense of a manned space program by saying that it will drive economic development. It will be more complicated than the first flight in 2003, which carried one astronaut and lasted just 21½ hours.

Minutes after liftoff, mission control announced that the first stage booster had successfully separated from the rocket and that the flight had entered its preset orbit.

[JoshuaZ]

Some people I know would probably say `Two down, 1.4 billion to go`.

As a citizen of the US, I can see the reaction from my government. `Holy Cr#p! They`re going to take over the moon!`

As a realistic person I would say `whatever.`

[The Godfather]

They have taken over the U.S. I-owe-yous already. You don't have to be an anarchist to acknowledge that China's big, big future is guaranteed by the West's consumism.

[Eug Wanker]

Chinese astronauts comfortable in orbit



Hmmm... Doesn't seem particularly comfortable to me.

P.S. They need a better camera.

[PacHead]

Communists have no fashion sense. Those space suits look ridiculous.

[JoshuaZ]

Plus their digital cameras suck. You`d think they`d spend like even a small amount on a camera after the billions for the rocket.

Also, who knew that their cell phone camera got reception up there.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by PacHead

Communists have no fashion sense. Those space suits look ridiculous.

Tis true.

They should go for this look:

[JoshuaZ]

I wonder if anyone has ever taken an iPod into space.... to go where no MP3 has gone before.

Even better. If someone has downloaded an MP3 from space. Then we really would have space pirates.

[PacHead]

Originally Posted by JoshuaZ

I wonder if anyone has ever taken an iPod into space.... to go where no MP3 has gone before.

Even better. If someone has downloaded an MP3 from space. Then we really would have space pirates.

That whole Chinese spaceship is probably pirated. Don't they even counterfit automobiles in China ? A significant portion of their economy depends upon counterfit goods.

[Railroader]

I will shamefully admit, when I looked at the title very quickly I saw:

Chinese takeout now in orbit (pix)"

Time for lunch maybe?

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Railroader

I will shamefully admit, when I looked at the title very quickly I saw “Chinese takeout now in orbit (pix)”.

Me too.

Besides, taikonaut is a silly word. If anything, they could have called it a taikongnaut—that would at least have made sense.

[m a d r a]

i bet it crashes on landing

[Cubeoid]

I wish them all the best.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by The Godfather

They have taken over the U.S. I-owe-yous already.

I thought the JAPANESE owned the U.S. foreign debt?

At least, they did in the 90s.

[m a d r a]

<random thought tenuously related to space/chinese>
i wonder if alien races in chinese sci-fi films use an alphabet strangely reminiscent of western characters - seeing as how most alien races featured in western made sci-fi films seem to use pictographic type characters, strangely reminiscent of chinese?
</random thought tenuously related to space/chinese>

[The Godfather]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

<random thought tenuously related to space/chinese>
i wonder if alien races in chinese sci-fi films use an alphabet strangely reminiscent of western characters - seeing as how most alien races featured in western made sci-fi films seem to use pictographic type characters, strangely reminiscent of chinese?
</random thought tenuously related to space/chinese>

Has Stephen Chow made any space sci-fi movie yet?

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

<random thought tenuously related to space/chinese>
i wonder if alien races in chinese sci-fi films use an alphabet strangely reminiscent of western characters - seeing as how most alien races featured in western made sci-fi films seem to use pictographic type characters, strangely reminiscent of chinese?
</random thought tenuously related to space/chinese>

Aliens in Western sci-fi films don't use characters at all reminiscent of Chinese, they use what, to me at least, looks like phonetic alphabets based very loosely on mixtures of various non-European letter forms, i.e. Korean, Mongol, Thai, as well as various cuneiform and hieroglyphic scripts, and sometimes even some Meso-American scripts. I can't recall seeing any sci-fi film where the aliens used anything that even remotely resembled the regularity and order/neatness found in Chinese characters.

[Mediaman_12]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

i bet it crashes on landing

Thats how these things are generally designed to land, like the Russian ones.

No so much a 'landing' more of a controlled plummet into the ground.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Cubeoid

I wish them all the pest.

Fixinated

-t

[residentEvil]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Chinese astronauts comfortable in orbit



Hmmm... Doesn't seem particularly comfortable to me.

P.S. They need a better camera.

Actually, that is more comfortable then their last manned mission. Did you see those photos? Oh man that was tiny. Think 1/2 that size.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Aliens in Western sci-fi films don't use characters at all reminiscent of Chinese, they use what, to me at least, looks like phonetic alphabets based very loosely on mixtures of various non-European letter forms, i.e. Korean, Mongol, Thai, as well as various cuneiform and hieroglyphic scripts, and sometimes even some Meso-American scripts. I can't recall seeing any sci-fi film where the aliens used anything that even remotely resembled the regularity and order/neatness found in Chinese characters.

Yeah, I don't either. Lots of humans in the future seem to like Chinese characters though.

Originally Posted by The Godfather

Has Stephen Chow made any space sci-fi movie yet?

OMG That would rock.

Originally Posted by residentEvil

Actually, that is more comfortable then their last manned mission. Did you see those photos? Oh man that was tiny. Think 1/2 that size.

Link to pix please.

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Aliens in Western sci-fi films don't use characters at all reminiscent of Chinese, they use what, to me at least, looks like phonetic alphabets based very loosely on mixtures of various non-European letter forms, i.e. Korean, Mongol, Thai, as well as various cuneiform and hieroglyphic scripts, and sometimes even some Meso-American scripts. I can't recall seeing any sci-fi film where the aliens used anything that even remotely resembled the regularity and order/neatness found in Chinese characters.

what i meant was they always seem to use languages based on single pictographs representing a "word" rather than strings of characters, as we do in the west. i was not saying the characters were chinese, or even resembled chinese. i just thought it interesting, how aliens use pictographic languages because they are the most "alien" to western eyes and wondered if the converse was true in china.

[m a d r a]

still on the [off-topic] subject of aliens, has anyone noticed how aliens names have changed since the 1960s? back then, yer average little green man had an honest to goodness no-nonsense solid sounding name with lots of Vs and Zs ... "zardoz" "votov" and the like. nowadays, they seem to have more guttural, strangely pronounced and stressed names like "ut-HURRR" and "ra-HAK-arrr".

why! - it's almost as if they were moving away from having slavic/russian sounding names to having chinese/korean/arabic sounding ones - pure coincidence, anyone?

[Eug Wanker]

Roman characters are commonly used in China.

And of course they are the basis of the ever amusing Chinglish.

Menu

Originally Posted by m a d r a

still on the [off-topic] subject of aliens, has anyone noticed how aliens names have changed since the 1960s? back then, yer average little green man had an honest to goodness no-nonsense solid sounding name with lots of Vs and Zs ... "zardoz" "votov" and the like. nowadays, they seem to have more guttural, strangely pronounced and stressed names like "ut-HURRR" and "ra-HAK-arrr".

why! - it's almost as if they were moving away from having slavic/russian sounding names to having chinese/korean/arabic sounding ones - pure coincidence, anyone?

Doesn't sound anything like those languages.

Anyways, I'm sure there is quite a bit of influence from Klingon, considering that it's an actual language now.

[wdlove]

I wish them all the best with this mission.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

what i meant was they always seem to use languages based on single pictographs representing a "word" rather than strings of characters, as we do in the west.

And I was just saying that all the ones I've seen look more like non-pictographic alphabets that just happen to look quite different from our Western ones. Korean looks quite pictographic in its shapes and forms, but is phonemic. Same with Mayan, and of course Hiragana and Katakana (the latter two actually being stylised forms of what was originally pictographs, just like our letters are ultimately highly stylised form of hieroglyphic pictographs).

They just don't look like 'word-representing' pictographs at all to me.

i just thought it interesting, how aliens use pictographic languages because they are the most "alien" to western eyes and wondered if the converse was true in china.

Nope. As Eug said, Western letters (mostly Latin, but also sometimes Cyrillic) are quite commonly used throughout China. In fact, many illiterate people in China can read the Latin alphabet, they just can't read enough characters to be categorised as literate.

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Menu

That is absolutely the best Chinglish menu I have EVER seen! I am going to send this to pretty much everyone I know from China. Amazing.

(For anyone wondering, a proper translation of the dishes would be, “Ribbonfish braised in soy sauce; Roast spareribs with potato; Dry-fried green vegetables*; Spicy 'n sour shredded potato; (don't know this one, 'cause I can only make out 'fish' behind the black bar); Sichuan/Szechwan-style kingfish; Cured meat dry-fried with turnips/radishes; Ma Po tofu [stir-fried tofu in spicy pepper sauce—they actually got this one right!]”)

* There's a character missing in the Chinese name of this one, after 'dry'; I'm guessing it's meant to be either shao3 or chao3, meaning 'fry'.

[FulcrumPilot]

The real mission objective: To litter "made in china" labels all over there.

[smacintush]

I would just like to belatedly congratulate the Chinese on their space missions. Welcome to 1961.

[ironknee]

it would be cool to see man land on the moon (or is it land on moon?) again...just for kicks

but the sad thing is china is probably using the interest they earn on the loan to the us..

[ghporter]

The idea behind the pictographic-style of writing is that to get to that point, a language has to have been around for a long, LONG time. On the other hand, linguistically a phonetically written (or sort of close to it like most Western languages) is more flexible and able to adapt both better and quicker.

The Chinese suits look amazingly like older Soyuz suits, too. Maybe they still had some of the stuff they bought from/had donated by the Soviets back before they got mad at each other in the late '60s. Their boosters sure look Soviet.

I'm still trying to figure out Maggie Thatcher's role in all of this, though.

[kikkoman]

Originally Posted by Oisín

(For anyone wondering, a proper translation of the dishes would be, “Ribbonfish braised in soy sauce; Roast spareribs with potato; Dry-fried green vegetables*; Spicy 'n sour shredded potato; (don't know this one, 'cause I can only make out 'fish' behind the black bar); Sichuan/Szechwan-style kingfish; Cured meat dry-fried with turnips/radishes; Ma Po tofu [stir-fried tofu in spicy pepper sauce—they actually got this one right!]”)

How in the world did f*ck get into original translation?

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by analogika

I thought the JAPANESE owned the U.S. foreign debt?

At least, they did in the 90s.

I think China owns most of the consumer debt. Japan has the government debt.

[residentEvil]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Link to pix please.

well, found out that the first mission (1 guy) was confined to the re-entry module only; so that is probably why i thought it looked so tiny. space.com, china.org.cn and chinadaily have photos of the re-entry module:

i've found an external photo so far: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/...ent_273868.htm

let me keep looking.

at least these two get to move into the orbital module (from your photo). so i still stand by that looks more comfortable; yes.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by ghporter

The idea behind the pictographic-style of writing is that to get to that point, a language has to have been around for a long, LONG time. On the other hand, linguistically a phonetically written (or sort of close to it like most Western languages) is more flexible and able to adapt both better and quicker.

Quite the contrary, actually: most writing systems started out as simple pictographs, and then developed into phonetic alphabets. Our very own Latin alphabet (descendent itself from the Ancient Greek alphabet, most directly) is ultimately derived from highly stylised hieroglyphic pictographs, borrowed for their phonetic values.

Even in Chinese, a still wholly logographic style of writing, many original pictographs have been borrowed and used purely for their phonetic values and combined with other pictographs to form new characters that were needed.

Originally Posted by kikkoman

How in the world did f*ck get into original translation?

Very simple, really: the character 干, when pronounced gān (in the first tone), it's the simplified form of 乾, which means 'dry'. But when it's pronounced gàn (in the fourth tone), it's the simplified form of 幹, which means 'to do', or colloquially, 'to f*ck'.

In traditional characters, this mix-up would have been impossible, because 'dry' and 'do/f*ck' are two different characters; but in simplified characters, these two words are both represented by the character 干, and there's room for mistakes.

[The Godfather]

Chinese Taikonauts now safe back on Earth. (Heard it on the radio.)

Congratulations, my communist friends. I hope your discoveries make space colonization a tangible possibility.

[wdlove]

Thanks, I'm happy to hear that they are safely back on earth. Congratulations to China on a safe mission.