Science, Engineering, & Technology in the News

[The Berean]

You find the Raid, The Berean?

I might need a whole case of Raid for that big beastie!

 

[Stripe]

Drop the case on his head? Good idea.

I dunno though. We don't even know if it would have any effect on them. It might just give them a pleasant high.

We should dust off, nuke the entire site from orbit...

 

[aikido7]

It's amazing that in over 100 years, the world has not been able to come up with a better fuel that oil.

Or has it?

Every now and then we hear rumors of a big breakthrough and then...nothing.

Here's the latest case.

A local US TV news program broadcast a report on a Clearwater, FL man who devised
a way to run an engine on water. That was many months ago and has far
as the media is concerned, the man and his invention has not been seen since.

If his engine was a hoax, then why wasn't that fact reported by the media? If it's for real, then what happened to it?

Details here:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/216.html

 

[The Berean]

For all it's faults crude oil is an incredible fuel source.

From wikipedia:

Because of its energy density, easy transportability and relative abundance, it has become the world's most important source of energy since the mid-1950s. Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics; the 16% not used for energy production is converted into these other materials.

The world economy is set up to process crude oil into fuel and many other products. The infrastructure for this is mature and is in place everywhere. To replace this infrastructure with another to use some other fuel would take decades at least.

 

[The Berean]

Holy Cow! :shocked: :liberals: :noway:

'Mathlete' smashes human calculation record: museum

London-AFP
Tue Dec 11, 12:21 PM ET

The world's fastest human calculator on Tuesday broke his own record for working out a 200-digit number using nothing but brain power to produce the answer in just over 70 seconds.

Alexis Lemaire, a 27-year-old Frenchman, correctly calculated the 13th root of a random 200-digit number from a possible 393 trillion answers.

The so-called 'mathlete' produced the answer of 2,407,899,893,032,210 in 70.2 seconds, beating his previous record of 72.4 seconds, at London's Science Museum.

A computer was used to produce a random 200-digit number before he sat down to calculate the answer in his head.

The museum's curator of mathematics, Jane Wess, said: "He sat down and it was all very quiet -- and all of a sudden he amazingly just cracked it.

"I believe that it is the highest sum calculated mentally.

"He seems to have a large memory and he's made this his life's ambition. It's quite remarkable to see it happen. A very small number of people have this extraordinary ability; nowadays there is only a handful."

Lemaire, who attends the University of Reims in northern France, began demonstrating his prowess by finding the 13th root of a random 100-digit number but gave up trying to improve his performance when he calculated an answer in under four seconds in 2004.

Like an athlete, he trains his brain daily for the far harder task of finding the 13th root of 200-digit numbers.

 

[koban]

Drop the case on his head? Good idea.

I dunno though. We don't even know if it would have any effect on them. It might just give them a pleasant high.

We should dust off, nuke the entire site from orbit...

It's the only way to be sure...

 

[aikido7]

Holy Cow! :shocked: :liberals: :noway:

And he doesn't even use a small portion of his own brain....

 

[kmoney]

Holy Cow! :shocked: :liberals: :noway:

:shocked: :jawdrop: :noway: That's awesome.

 

[The Berean]

And he doesn't even use a small portion of his own brain....

So he only uses the big portion of his brain? :idunno:

 

[The Berean]

:shocked: :jawdrop: :noway: That's awesome.

Yeah, but I bet he's never had a girlfriend or kissed a girl. :chuckle: (Where's William Shatner when you need him?)

 

[koban]

He's just real lucky at guessing.

 

[The Berean]

He's just real lucky at guessing.

:chuckle:

 

[Nick M]

It's amazing that in over 100 years, the world has not been able to come up with a better fuel that oil.

Or has it?

Every now and then we hear rumors of a big breakthrough and then...nothing.

Here's the latest case.

A local US TV news program broadcast a report on a Clearwater, FL man who devised
a way to run an engine on water. That was many months ago and has far
as the media is concerned, the man and his invention has not been seen since.

If his engine was a hoax, then why wasn't that fact reported by the media? If it's for real, then what happened to it?

Details here:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/216.html

Why would the news report that they fell for something so stupid? :hammer: Retractions are always burried.

Oil is by far the best product of energy for cars in terms of logistics, usefullness, and cost. Hydrocarbons produce a giant whallop of BTU's of energy.

Greek fire is only a myth, if that is what they were getting at. If it was just sodium, or something else that acted violently in water, we would have gotten it by now.

Thanks to Earl Halliburton :bannana: , we can get oil out of the ground at a lower cost than all other types of fuel today. This is because we can get more of it with his wells.

 

[kmoney]

Wii remote in Virtual reality

 

[The Berean]

This is right out of the move The Fifth Element! :chz4brnz:

Unleashing the Bugs of War

By MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON
Sat Apr 19, 2008

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, that secretive band of Pentagon geeks that searches obsessively for the next big thing in the technology of warfare, is 50 years old. To celebrate, DARPA invited Vice President Dick Cheney, a former Defense Secretary well aware of the Agency's capabilities, to help blow out the candles. "This agency brought forth the Saturn 5 rocket, surveillance satellites, the Internet, stealth technology, guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles, night vision and the body armor that's in use today," Cheney told 1,700 DARPA workers and friends who gathered at a Washington hotel to mark the occasion. "Thank heaven for DARPA."

Created in the panicky wake of the Soviets' launching of Sputnik, the world's first satellite, DARPA's mission, Cheney said, is "to make sure that America is never again caught off guard." So, the Agency does the basic research that may be decades away from battlefield applications. It doesn't develop new weapons, as much as it pioneers the technologies that will make tomorrow's weapons better.

So what's hot at DARPA right now? Bugs. The creepy, crawly flying kind. The Agency's Microsystems Technology Office is hard at work on HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System), raising real insects filled with electronic circuitry, which could be guided using GPS technology to specific targets via electrical impulses sent to their muscles. These half-bug, half-chip creations - DARPA calls them "insect cyborgs" - would be ideal for surveillance missions, the agency says in a brief description on its website.

Scientist Amit Lal and his team insert mechanical components into baby bugs during "the caterpillar and the pupae stages," which would then allow the adult bugs to be deployed to do the Pentagon's bidding. "The HI-MEMS program is aimed at developing tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis," DARPA says. "Since a majority of the tissue development in insects occurs in the later stages of metamorphosis, the renewed tissue growth around the MEMS will tend to heal, and form a reliable and stable tissue-machine interface." Such bugs "could carry one or more sensors, such as a microphone or a gas sensor, to relay back information gathered from the target destination."

DARPA declined TIME's request to interview Dr. Lal about his program and the progress he is making in producing the bugs. The agency added that there is no timetable for turning backyard pests into battlefield assets. But in a written statement, spokeswoman Jan Walker said that "living, adult-stage insects have emerged with the embedded systems intact." Presumably, enemy arsenals will soon be well-stocked with Raid. View this article on Time.com

 

[fool]

It's amazing that in over 100 years, the world has not been able to come up with a better fuel that oil.

Or has it?

Every now and then we hear rumors of a big breakthrough and then...nothing.

Here's the latest case.

A local US TV news program broadcast a report on a Clearwater, FL man who devised
a way to run an engine on water. That was many months ago and has far
as the media is concerned, the man and his invention has not been seen since.

If his engine was a hoax, then why wasn't that fact reported by the media? If it's for real, then what happened to it?

Details here:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/216.html

Am HHO generator, I'm working on one right now.

 

[The Berean]

Iron Man here we come!

Robotic suit could usher in super soldier era

By MARK JEWELL, AP Business Writer
Thu May 15, 2008

Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis and skis when time allows. But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he presses 200 pounds — that is, until he steps into an "exoskeleton" of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his strength and endurance as many as 20 times.

With the outfit's claw-like metal hand extensions, he gripped a weight set's bar at a recent demonstration and knocked off hundreds of repetitions. Once, he did 500.

"Everyone gets bored much more quickly than I get tired," Jameson said.

Jameson — who works for robotics firm Sarcos Inc. in Salt Lake City, which is under contract with the U.S. Army — is helping assess the 150-pound suit's viability for the soldiers of tomorrow. The suit works by sensing every movement the wearer makes and almost instantly amplifying it.

The Army believes soldiers may someday wear the suits in combat, but it's focusing for now on applications such as loading cargo or repairing heavy equipment. Sarcos is developing the technology under a two-year contract worth up to $10 million, and the Army plans initial field tests next year.

Before the technology can become practical, the developers must overcome cost barriers and extend the suit's battery life. Jameson was tethered to power cords during his demonstration because the current battery lasts just 30 minutes.

But the technology already offers evidence that robotics can amplify human muscle power in reality — not just in the realm of comic books and movies like the recently debuted "Iron Man," about a wealthy weapons designer who builds a high-tech suit to battle bad guys.

"Everybody likes the idea of being a superhero, and this is all about expanding the capabilities of a human," said Stephen Jacobsen, chief designer of the Sarcos suit.

The Army's exoskeleton research dates to 1995, but has yet to yield practical suits. Sarcos' technology sufficiently impressed Raytheon Co., however, that the Waltham, Mass.-based defense contractor bought Sarcos' robotics business last November. Sarcos also has developed robotic dinosaurs for a Universal Studios' "Jurassic Park" theme park ride.

Jack Obusek, a former colonel now with the Army's Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center in the Boston suburb of Natick, foresees robot-suited soldiers unloading heavy ammunition boxes from helicopters, lugging hundreds of pounds of gear over rough terrain or even relying on the suit's strength-enhancing capabilities to make repairs to tanks that break down in inconvenient locations.

Sarcos' Jacobsen envisions factory workers someday using the technology to perform manual labor more easily, and firefighters more quickly carrying heavy gear up stairwells of burning buildings. Disabled people also may find uses for the technology, he said.

"We see the value being realized when these suits can be built in great numbers for both military and commercial uses, and they start coming down in cost to within the range of the price of a small car," said Jacobsen. He declined to estimate how much the suit might cost in mass production.

But cost isn't the only obstacle. For example, developers eventually hope to lengthen the suit's backpack battery's life and tinker with the suit's design to use less energy. Meanwhile, the suit can draw power from a generator, a tank or helicopter. And there are gas engines that, while noisy, small enough to fit into the suit's backpack.

"The power issue is probably the No. 1 challenge standing in the way of getting this thing in the field," Obusek said.

But he said Sarcos appears to have overcome the key challenge of pairing super-fast microprocessors with sensors that detect movements by the body's joints and transmit data about them to the suit's internal computer.

Much as the brain sends signals to tendons to get muscles to move, the computer sends instructions to hydraulic valves. The valves mimic tendons by driving the suit's mechanical limbs, replicating and amplifying the wearer's movements almost instantly.

"With all the previous attempts at this technology, there has been a slight lag time between the intent of the human, and the actual movement of the machine," Obusek said.

In the demonstration, the bulky suit slowed Jameson a bit, but he could move almost normally. When a soccer ball was thrown at him, he bounced it back off his helmeted head. He repeatedly struck a punching bag and, slowly but surely, he climbed stairs in the suit's clunky aluminum boots, which made him look like a Frankenstein monster.

"It feels less agile than it is," Jameson said. "Because of the way the control laws work, it's ever so slightly slower than I am. And because we are so in tune with our bodies' responses, this tiny delay initially made me tense."

Now, he's used to it.

"I can regain my balance naturally after stumbling — something I discovered completely by accident."

Learning was easy, he said.

"It takes no special training, beyond learning to relax and trust the robot," he said.

Where is Tony Stark?

 

[The Berean]

I love a airplanes! :banana: Here's a cool photo of the X-48B.

Blended Wing Body Starts Flying Faster

By Aviation.com Staff
21 May 2008

The X-48B Blended Wing Body research aircraft banks smartly in this Block 2 flight phase image, taken on April 4, 2008. NASA and Boeing have dubbed the aircraft 'Skyray.' Credit: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center
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The X-48B Blended Wing Body research aircraft banks smartly in this Block 2 flight phase image, taken on April 4, 2008. NASA and Boeing have dubbed the aircraft 'Skyray.' Credit: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center and Boeing have expanded flight testing for the X-48B blended wing body (BWB) research aircraft into the second of six planned phases.

The second phase of flight tests with the 500-pound, remotely piloted test vehicle involves higher speed regimes. The 21-foot-wingspan test aircraft is flying without its slats deployed. Slats are flight control surfaces on the leading edges of wings which, when extended, allow an aircraft to take off, fly and land at slower speeds.

X-48B flight testing is taking place at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. NASA Dryden is providing critical support to a Boeing-led project team that also includes the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, and Cranfield Aerospace Ltd., of Bedford, England.

“The first flight in the slats-retracted configuration marked another milestone in aviation history and the performance of the X-48 aircraft continues to exceed our expectations,” said Tim Risch, X-48B project manager for NASA.

“We want to fully understand the aerodynamics of the blended wing body design all the way up to and beyond stall, so that we can learn how to fly a blended wing body aircraft as safely as any other large transport aircraft with a conventional tail,” said Norm Princen, Boeing's X-48B chief engineer. “This latest phase of the flight testing is one more step in the process and we are looking forward to progressing on to more risky flight maneuvers in the months ahead.”

Initial X-48B flight tests, known as the Block 1 phase, consisted of 11 flights and incorporated slow-speed testing with bolt-on leading-edge slats in the extended position. Block 2 flights began on April 4. The X-48B made its first flight on July 20, 2007.

BWB test aircraft dubbed 'Skyray'

Dubbed 'Skyray' by the partners, the sub-scale BWB aircraft now sports a clean leading edge and takes off and lands at speeds of about 75 knots, compared with 60 knots in the Block 1 flight tests. In Block 2 flight tests, NASA Dryden and Boeing will gather data from the aircraft at speeds up to 118 knots.

At least eight flights are scheduled for the Block 2 phase. In all, the project calls for a total of six flight-test phases, each progressively increasing the level of flight-envelope risk. The final phase, Block 6, is designed to push the aircraft's flight parameters by testing the departure limiter, a critical part of the flight control software that is designed as a safety feature to prevent the aircraft from going into uncontrolled flight.

NASA's participation in the blended wing body research effort is focused on advanced flight dynamics and structural design concepts within the Subsonic Fixed Wing Project. This project is part of the Fundamental Aeronautics Program managed by NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

BWB design's potential benefits

Potential benefits of the blended wing body design include increased volume and thus greater carrying capacity, efficient aerodynamics for reduced fuel burn and, possibly, significant noise reductions allowed by propulsion integration. In initial flight testing, NASA's and Boeing's principal focus is to validate research on the aerodynamics and controllability of the shape, including comparisons of flight data with the extensive database of aerodynamic data collected in wind-tunnel tests.

In addition to hosting the X-48B flight-test and research activities, NASA Dryden provides engineering and technical expertise garnered from years of operating cutting-edge aircraft. Dryden assists with the hardware and software validation and verification process, the integration and testing of the aircraft's systems and the pilot's ground control station. Its range group provides critical telemetry and command and control communications during X-48B flights, while Dryden Flight Operations provides a chase aircraft and flight scheduling. Photo and video support complement the effort.

Members of the Boeing Phantom Works research and technology organization, based in Huntington Beach, Calif., designed the X-48B flight test aircraft in cooperation with NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to gather detailed information about the stability and flight-control characteristics of the blended wing body design, especially during takeoffs and landings.

Three small jet engines enable the composite-skinned, 8.5-percent-scale vehicle to fly up to an altitude of 10,000 feet. A pilot flies the aircraft remotely from a ground control station, using conventional aircraft controls and instrumentation while viewing a monitor fed by a forward-looking camera on the aircraft.

Two X-48B research vehicles were built by Cranfield Aerospace Ltd. Ship 1, a duplicate of the Ship 2 flight test aircraft, completed extensive wind tunnel testing in 2006 in the full-scale wind tunnel at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Ship 1 remains available for use as a back-up aircraft during the flight test program.

 

[yankeedoodled]

For those that like to grow things, the most impressive natural growth hormone stimulant fertilizers i have ever heard of and highly impressed in using it.

Gibberellic Acid-3 (GA-3)

If you grow plants indoors or outdoors it comes close to being a miracle.
I have had tremendous success with my garden, fruit trees and indoor plants of the wife's. It varies from types of plants, some effects are more dramatic than others. Worth every cent and a very small amount goes a long ways. Our indoor Christmas plants usually die from under and over watering within a couple of months. With gibberellic acid when you forget to water the plant the plant will eventually begin to wilt, but when you water the plant it quickly responds and recovers due to the gibberellic acid it has been treated with. Indoor plants will out grow the pots they are planted in, from what we have grown. I grew a pumpkin so large last year i almost couldn't pick it up.
Available from many gardening sites on the net. Good luck gardening !

Also for those interested in science, United Nuclear is one of the most fascinating sites i have found on the net. You can purchase stuff i didn't think could be purchased, including gibberellic acid.
http://www.unitednuclear.com/

 

[The Berean]

Maybe one day I will be eating chow-fun on the Moon! :chew:

China's First Spacewalk: A Prelude of Things to Come

By Leonard David, Special Correspondent, SPACE.com
24 June 2008 07:00 am ET

GOLDEN, Colo. — China is stepping up and out in the world of space exploration.

Space officials in that country are readying the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft for an October sendoff, one that will carry a trio of their "taikonauts" into Earth orbit. The mission not only promises to strengthen China's human space travel agenda, but also provides a glimpse into actions to be undertaken in the future.

China has initiated a step-by-step approach in flying their taikonauts: The single-person Shenzhou 5 flight in 2003 of 14 orbits; the two-person voyage of Shenzhou 6 in 2005 lasting 5 days; and soon to head skyward, a threesome of space travelers. And on this flight, one of those space travelers is to carry out China's first spacewalk, also known as extravehicular activity, or EVA for short.

In some ways, the upcoming mission spotlights the hop, skip, and jump abilities of China in comparison to U.S. space history.

For the U.S., the Mercury series of single-seat flights led to the two-person missions of Gemini spacecraft, followed by sojourns of the Apollo three-person crew capsule. More to the point, in the U.S., the first human-carrying orbital flight of Mercury was in 1962; Gemini in 1965; and Apollo in 1968.

So is there a true measure of growth, albeit somewhat skewed given the driving nature of the Soviet Union versus the U.S. "Moon race"?

Case in point: If this next mission for China is successful in attaining orbit, that country will have taken something like a year less time to move from single-seat orbital flight to Apollo three-seat space travel - contrasted to U.S. human spaceflight progress in Earth orbit.

Learning curve

On one hand, China's steadfast evolution in human space treks is laudable. On the other, given that status card, leading spaceflight aficionados seem to sense different take-home messages.

"Implications, as far as I can see...few, if any," said Joan Johnson-Freese, an analyst of China's space policy and Chair of the National Security Decision-Making Department at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

Johnson-Freese told SPACE.com that the U.S. Mercury program of the 1960s was spearheading research just to see if humans could swallow in space...or how the human psyche would react once in Earth orbit. There were lots of medical questions, she noted.

NASA's Project Mercury was quickly followed by a salvo of 10 human-carrying Gemini flights from March 1965 to November 1966. All-in-all, piloted Mercury and Gemini orbital outings tally up to 14 flights in five years, Johnson-Freese observed — and don't forget those two earlier and piloted suborbital Mercury missions.

"Technology development was incremental because it was all new, but consistent," Johnson-Freese stressed.

"The Chinese will have three flights with a successful mission next fall. They have been able to benefit from lots of lessons learned from both the Americans and the Russians. That is not to downplay the difficulty of the technology or the achievements of the Chinese...they just have the luxury of starting much higher on the learning curve," she concluded.

Pow...pow...pow

Given the years of mastering human space travel, is China's blossoming to-do list in order to operate in Earth orbit worth spotlighting?

"Yes, absolutely...it is worth flagging," said Dean Cheng, an Asian affairs specialist at the U.S.-based Center for Naval Analysis in Alexandria, Virginia.

"Now, the flip side to that, of course, is that it has also been done before. So it's not like they need to engineer everything from scratch," Cheng told SPACE.com, adding that China can depend on designs similar to those proven to work by the U.S. and former Russians. "But, yes, it is nonetheless impressive."

Cheng points out, however: "The main difference ...there were more Mercury and Gemini flights in the intervening period. What is interesting about the Chinese effort is that they are doing it with so few flights. Four unmanned flights...then pow-pow- pow...one-man, two-man, three-man/EVA."

Cheng also underscored the built-in danger to nations that ramp up human spaceflight expertise. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union lost people during their respective run-ups.

"You have to wonder if the Chinese can sustain a perfect space record," he added. "Obviously, one hope's that they can."

Take-away knowledge

In terms of where China is really headed in human spaceflight, crystal ball gazing is not easy.

Stacking up their one-two-three punch in the field of human spaceflight against U.S. space program heritage doesn't quite match up, said Roger Launius, senior curator for the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

"Learning what China needs to know about conducting a lunar trip, probably a circumlunar trip, on three missions seems a bit thin to me," Launius told SPACE.com.

While Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs might have been exceptionally cautious — and thus took more time and a greater number of missions than the Chinese effort — the knowledge return from the American programs versus China's three flights cannot be anywhere near each other, Launius explained.

"Let's take the Gemini program," Launius said. "A central reason for it was to perfect techniques for rendezvous and docking, EVA, and long duration flight. Assuming that these same skills will be required in a Chinese moon program, and I believe they will, where will the knowledge and experience for them come from in these three missions?"

Launius said that the Gemini flights swamp China in terms of demonstrated skills. The country has yet to rack up the experience base of spacewalking, rendezvous and docking that is now standard in the U.S. and Russia, he added.

"A core question, it seems to me, is this: "Will ground simulation be able to compensate for the lack of orbital experience?" Launius said. "Perhaps, but I'm not sure."

More acclaim than deserved?

Stepping back and taking a larger look at where China's human space program is headed, Launius observed: "Personally, I think the Chinese program is moving forward at a modest pace and is getting a lot of mileage out of the fact that it is a secret effort that forces us to speculate about it. It is receiving among the space community more acclaim than I think it deserves."

Launius said that there's enough in China's statements on future manned moon missions to fuel Western speculation that the country has a vast program, immensely capable, and seeking to at least equal the Americans in a Moon program of its own.

"There is no official Chinese evidence to support the concept of a Chinese human moon program, despite the wishes of some inside the Chinese space program who would love to do it. Occasionally, someone will say something about this to Western media but official documents available do not say anything about such a program," Launius said.

There are those in the U.S. space community that would like to see China hell-bent on sending taikonauts onto the moon's surface, Launius said, because they believe it would spark a new space race. "I'm not sure that would be the outcome of these Chinese efforts...but I also see no evidence for serious Chinese efforts in that direction," he added.

Picking up speed

Meanwhile, preparations to launch Shenzhou 7 are picking up speed in China.

According to Chinese news services, the spacecraft has undergone modifications to accommodate an airlock. A spacewalking-qualified space suit has been okayed for flight. There have been extensive checkouts of the craft to fulfill its mission objectives.

What day the three-person crew takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on its Long March booster in October is yet to be announced. Earlier, there has been comment about broadcasting the spacewalk live on television.

Moreover, the spacewalk mission — and the duties to be performed during the EVA — has been deemed as crucial for China to make possible a space laboratory or station in Earth orbit.

Earlier this month, it was noted that six taikonauts had been selected for the upcoming mission from 14 candidates — a crowd that included Yang Liwei, China's first space explorer who flew solo on Shenzhou 5. For Shenzhou 7, three will fly the actual mission with the others tagged as substitutes.

Also, Yuanwang 6, an ocean-going tracking ship, has been delivered for service in Shanghai to participate in the Shenzhou 7 flight and to assist in the slated spacewalk. It joins sister ship, Yuanwang 5, to take part in maritime space surveying and mission controlling operations.

Qi Faren, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and researcher of China Spaceflight Technology Research Institute — credited as chief designer of China's first five Shenzhou spaceships and chief consultant for Shenzhou 6 and Shenzhou 7 - has been quoted as saying that plans are already underway for Shenzhou 8 and Shenzhou 9. He added that "the intervals between each launch will become shorter.