BEIJING (AP) -- In a rare look at China's preparations for manned space flight, a government newspaper on Saturday gave the first public description of a top-secret astronaut training center on Beijing's outskirts.
The Guangzhou Daily's account of orange-suited astronauts riding flight simulators and training for zero gravity could have come straight out of the movie The Right Stuff.
It described white-robed technicians looking on as an astronaut in a large white helmet climbed into a metal chamber to experience the low pressures found in Earth orbit.
Another would-be space traveler sat strapped in a chair at the end of a long boom, which spun at high speed to reproduce the bone-crushing pressure of blastoff.
A four-story green windowless building housed a training capsule that simulated the shock of a spacecraft's fiery reentry into the atmosphere.
The report didn't say how many astronauts trained at the undisclosed site west of the Chinese capital, or whether they have also received instruction in Russia, as some foreign reports have said.
China has set a goal of manned spaceflight by the end of this decade. It gives little information about its secretive space program, which has strong ties to the military.
It has invested considerable resources and prestige in the project, hoping to become only the third nation after Russia and the United States to put a human in space.
China has developed its own spaceship, the Shenzhou, or "Sacred Vessel,'' whose round body and wing-like solar panels resemble Russia's venerable Soyuz space capsule.
China has sent two of the craft into orbit atop Long March rockets. It released photos following the first unmanned test flight in November 1999, but secrecy surrounding the second in January has sparked speculation of a malfunction.
advertisement
