from the American General Electric Apollo spacecraft proposal?
• Who was the first Chinese person to fly in space?The People Republic of China’s Yang Liwei was not the first person born in China to fly in space. William Anders, born in Hong Kong, orbited the moon in December 1968. Shannon Lucid, born in Shanghai, holds the world record for a woman for time in space (over 223 days in space on 5 spaceflights). And physicist Taylor Wang, also born in Shanghai, spent seven days in space aboard shuttle mission STS-51-B in 1985. • What should the Chinese astronauts be called in English? During the Cold War, the press adopted the Russian word ‘cosmonaut’ to refer to Soviet astronauts. This became muddled after 1990, when ‘astronauts’ from many nations served aboard Mir and the International Space Station. The French term ‘spationaut’ never became popular in English. Chen Lan, who pioneered coverage of the Chinese space program on the web, coined the artificial word ‘taikonaut’, from the Chinese word for outer space. The Chinese term, used in official sta
