"When the first human beings looked up at the starry sky, human civilization began from there!"
From the curiosity of the 173 questions in Qu Yuan's "Tianwen"; to the yearning of thousands of households to fly in the air; until Yang Liwei traveled into space on Shenzhou 5 in 2003, the long-cherished wish of flying that haunted Chinese for thousands of years was finally realized.
As we all know, Yang Liwei is the first generation of astronauts trained by China, and also the first person in China to enter space, Yang Liwei displayed the United Nations flag and the five-star red flag in space, and as a result, Yang Liwei became China's first Chinese astronaut to display the five-star red flag in space.
Before Yang Liwei went into space, there was also a Chinese-American who was born in China and went into space with the "Challenger" in 1985, and he also brought the five-star red flag into space.
In 1985, he visited Chinese mainland with his wife and children and presented the Chinese government with a flag of the People's Republic of China that he had taken into space.
It is worth mentioning that he once refused to return to Earth during his space travel.
Who is this Chinese, and why did he refuse to return to Earth for a while?
The first Chinese to enter space, his job is not an astronaut, he entered space as a "payload expert" for scientific experiments and exploration, similar to Gui Haichao, a "space mentor" who was very popular some time ago.
He was born in Jiangxi in 1940, hence the name, and later moved to Chongqing with his parents, moved to Shanghai after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, and studied in Shanghai for primary school, graduated from high school in 1960 and entered the Department of Mathematics of the University of Hong Kong, and went to the United States in 1963 to enter the University of California, Los Angeles, and received a Ph.D. in physics from UCLA in 1971.
Because his Ph.D. research on cryogenic superfluids, involving the behavior of droplets and other spherical objects in zero gravity, he participated in NASA's zero-gravity mission and developed the "Droplet Power Module" experiment, which raised his research to a new level of space research.
With this research, he joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1972 and became a naturalized American citizen three years later.
He had never wanted to become an astronaut before, but unexpectedly, and reasonably, he applied to NASA for experiments in space, and after training and selection, in 1983, he became an astronaut on NASA's "Space Lab" mission.
Finally, from April 29 to May 6, 1985, he flew in space on the space shuttle Challenger for seven days and conducted space experiments on the research topic.
He became the first Chinese to fly into space, and he was also the first descendant of Yan and Huang to bring the five-star red flag into space, he is the winner of the 2012 "Influencing the World Chinese Lifetime Achievement Award", Taylor Gun-Jin Wang.
So what happened to him once refusing to return to Earth?
Don't worry, let's take a picture of a padlocked capsule door.
In July 1995, the CBS Nightly News aired a clip about padlocks, during which the only photo was shown of a lock hanging from the door of the space shuttle's capsule.
CBS's Scott Perry said a source said, "NASA was worried about what would happen if an astronaut had a nervous breakdown in space and didn't know what would happen afterward, so they put a lock."
In the early days of the Space Shuttle program, a payload specialist was on a mission where his experiment failed, he was emotionally broken, and the hatch was seen as an attackable weakness. ”
The "load expert" mentioned in the middle of this passage may be Wang Ganjun.
At that time, Wang Ganjun participated in the voyage, only staying in space for a week, and the amount of research to be completed in the space laboratory was too large, and the crew members were divided into two teams, "gold" and "silver", each team worked in shifts of 12 hours, and Wang Ganjun was in the "gold" team.
According to the latest information disclosed on NASA's official website, the situation at that time was as follows.
On the second day of entering space, Wang Ganjun's experiment to operate the droplet dynamics module failed.
In his book Space Shuttle, he later wrote:
"I turned on my lab equipment and it didn't work. ”
"Can you imagine my pain. It took me five years to prepare for this one and only experiment.
Not only that, but I was also the first Chinese to fly the space shuttle into space, and the Chinese community paid a lot of attention to me. ...... As a child, the first thing you learn is not to disgrace your family.
So, when I realized that the experiment had failed, I could imagine my father saying to me, 'How did you do this?!!' ”
Because the equipment was not operating, Wang Ganjun asked NASA's ground flight controllers if he could take some time to troubleshoot the problem and maybe fix the experiment.
But in any Space Shuttle mission, time is precious, and flight controllers are not willing.
At this time, Wang Ganjun's mood was extremely low, and he began to bargain with the ground flight controller in a hurry, saying: "If you don't let me fix the equipment, I won't come back!"
Today, most of the crew members who worked on the mission 40 years ago have passed away, and only 83-year-old Wang is still alive, though he is reluctant to talk about it.
What happened afterwards was told by Grigory, the captain of the silver team on the same mission.
Gregory said that Wang Ganjun was a "very remarkable" man and an excellent crew.
"I remember waking up at the beginning of my shift and seeing the door taped on," Gregory said. ”
But what exactly that happened is not known today.
In an article published by NASA, Overmire speculated that Overmire was worried that Wang Ganjun would go to open the hatch.
Because NASA designed the hatch to open outwards to the vacuum, it took little effort to open the hatch.
So to avoid accidents, Overmayer put duct tape on the hatch as a stopgap measure.
The good news is that the next day, Wang Ganjun received permission to repair the experimental equipment, and he finally succeeded in getting the experiment up and running.
In the end, he repaired the equipment, and the experiments he conducted confirmed some theoretical problems in the dynamics of droplets, discovered and revealed some physical phenomena and activity laws of droplets in a gravity-free container environment, and the study of the entire fluid mechanics, the development of space smelting, the chemical industry and the processing technology of containerless materials, and the manufacture of high-purity substances have potential practical value.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) praised Wang's space experiments and awarded him the Space Flight Award, which he later received from a series of awards.
Wang Ganjun's trip to space caused a strong shock in the United States and the Chinese world, with the mayor of Los Angeles hosting a feast to celebrate him, and the space center also held a number of lectures for him.
However, Wang Ganjun said, "In my opinion, this is not my personal honor, but the pride of all Chinese." ”
We can see from his words and deeds that what he thinks in his heart is like the lyrics "My ancestors have already branded everything I have with a Chinese seal".
In addition to the five-star red flag that he gave to the mainland, he also took a lot of photos of the mainland's great rivers and mountains when the spacecraft flew over the mainland.
However, no matter how nostalgic he misses his hometown, he can only come to the mainland, Jiangxi, Chongqing, Shanghai, etc., as a Chinese-American, and these places he was once very familiar with as a "guest".
Later, astronaut Yang Liwei took Shenzhou 5 to space in 2003, which was a historic moment in the development of mainland aerospace science and technology, which is worth remembering forever.
As the first Chinese to enter space, Yang Liwei in addition to the five-star red flag and he went into space with him, he also brought countless independently developed scientific and technological products that carried the future and expectations of the Chinese people, such as the "moon cake" he ate around the Mid-Autumn Festival, that is, the astronaut energy meal (space breakfast), which is the unique "romance" of the Chinese people.
The invention of the astronaut energy meal is also a microcosm of the development of aerospace science and technology on the mainland.
At that time, it was considered that in the event of an emergency situation in orbit during the manned space mission, the spacecraft could not return to the ground for a long time, or deviated from the target landing site on the way back, and was lost in the forest, ocean or desert, and it was difficult for the ground rescuers to quickly rescue them, the astronauts would need to live on their own for a period of time, and during this time they needed food to replenish their energy.
The mainland searched all over the world, and there was no food suitable for the mainland space mission, so the team was organized to overcome difficulties and independently developed an astronaut energy meal.
The characteristics of this astronaut energy meal finally developed are: easy absorption, long-lasting energy, anti-fatigue, rich nutrition, safety and hygiene, light size, and easy to carry.
In case of an emergency or a physically demanding task, astronauts can replenish their energy with astronaut energy meals.
Now this product has gone to the people, the patent has been transferred to the enterprise, and everyone can buy and taste it.
At present, the development of the mainland's aerospace industry is still facing many challenges, and I hope that all difficulties can be overcome, and the development of aerospace science and technology will go better and better!
注：本内容有关王赣骏先生的事迹及图片，参考自“arstechnica.com”网站1月22日所发文章《What happens when an astronaut in orbit says hes not coming back?》及凤凰网相关报道。
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