What do the Chinese call their astronauts?

Shenzhou-6 is China's first multi-manned and multi-day spaceflight (see here, here), and is now entering its third day in orbit.

My students were completely unaware of it. Most of them were unaware of the fact that the Chinese had ever been to space. None were aware that there is a new space race brewing, which may be bad for somebody politically, but which should be good for science educators.

Here is what my students know about space flight, in general:
- The Russians launched Sputnik and it was a big deal.
- The Russians put a man in space before the U.S.
- The Russians put animals in space, as well.
- John Glenn was an astronaut.
- The Americans did finally surpass Soviet achievements.
- The Americans landed on the moon (this is contested by approximately a third of my students, who believe that this has been proven to be a hoax. Proven!)
- "Apollo 13" is based on a real NASA mission.
- There was a shuttle that blew up on liftoff, in an unknown year. (One student even knew that a O-ring failed, though he was surprised to learn what an O-ring is, and how small one is. After I learned that they didn't know much about this, we watched streaming video of the Challenger, and many students claim never to have seen it before. I find this amazing, but I am sure some of you will find it amazing that I was born after the last lunar landing.)
- There was a shuttle that blew up on reentry a few years ago. Given a few seconds, they were able to recall that it was the Columbia. They had a vague understanding that foam cracked the wing. There was a sense that a coverup may have been involved on this catastrophe, as well.

Remember, these are 16-18 year olds in public schools in America. I was glad to see the things that were known by most, and I am endeavoring to fill in the gaps. The following is a very incomplete list of things they do not know about space flight, just based on the last week's worth of conversation:

- Anything about the X-prize, except that "that British guy who owns Virgin" is involved in a deal to commercialize space flight. A great discussion ensued about whether it is worth $200,000 to buy 2 half hour flights.
- Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Gregory Olsen.
- Anything about nations other than the USA and USSR putting anything into space, with the exception of students who were of the same nationality as an astronaut they were aware of (Indian, Israeli, Japanese).
- ISS ("Do you mean there are people in orbit right now, on that thing?")
- the altitude at which things orbit.

I shared J-Track with AP today, and they were wonderfully impressed, as am I every time I check that thing out (JAVA applet 3-D plot showing the position of over 500 satellites in real time). The other classes may see it on Monday... technology pending. More about that in the next post.