The following are some facts and figures about space flight in general and China's second manned spacecraft Shenzhou VI:
3 -- A spacecraft is able to carry three persons and hundreds of kilograms of cargo. It is technologically simpler and less expensive to use spacecraft, but it cannot guarantee logistics support for a large space station;
7 -- A space shuttle is able to carry seven people and 30 tons of goods. But it needs more complicated technologies and much bigger budget, and its reliability will decrease as the number of flights it undertakes increase;
2015 -- A new type of space vessel that will synthesize the merits of both spacecraft and space shuttle is expected to come into being in the year of 2015;
4/9 -- China's space telemetry network consists of four tracking ships and nine tracking stations on land, to monitor the Shenzhou VI spacecraft and collect data it transmits from space;
13 -- There are 13 planned landing sites for the return of the Shenzhou VI capsule, including the primary one in northern Inner Mongolia and the secondary in Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwestern desert, and 11 emergency sites at home and abroad like in Australia, north Africa, Western Europe and the United States;
17/25 -- The temperature inside the Shenzhou VI capsule will be maintained between 17 and 25 degrees Celsius, in which people feel most comfortable;
25 -- Two taikonauts, the Chinese term for astronauts, have 25 varieties of rescue goods and materials in their emergency kits, each weighing 24.5 kilograms;
30/600/10 -- The Shenzhou VI spacecraft has cables totaling 30 kilometers in length, 600 sets of equipment and merely 10 cubic meters of usable space in the orbital module and re-entry module;
100/10 -- The "black box" aboard the Shenzhou VI spacecraft has increased its storage capacity by 100 times that of Shenzhou V and the speed of reading and writing by 10 times;
500 -- Although more than 500 pieces of space debris could come into the orbit of the Shenzhou VI spacecraft, the vessel will be safe in its flight as China is capable of monitoring such space rubbish flying in low orbit where Shenzhou-6 is circling;
1,000 -- The "black box" of Shenzhou VI is armed with a special shield that can sustain under extreme temperature of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius for half an hour or in seawater for one month.
(Xinhua News Agency October 14, 2005)
