In the early spring of 1956, with the establishment of the Aviation Industry Committee, the mainland's aerospace industry ushered in a historic beginning. Up to now, China's aerospace industry has gone through 67 spring and autumn periods, and in more than half a century, it has made a series of great achievements that the Chinese people are proud of.
In the history of China's aerospace industry, there is a name that cannot be ignored, and that is Nie Haisheng. As one of the earliest astronauts on the mainland, this aerospace hero has flown three times and made important contributions to the mainland's aerospace industry. However, in 2021, he stepped down as the captain of the astronaut group, so what did he do after that?
Nie Haisheng is a native of Hubei, born in a small village in Zaoyang in the sixties of the last century, and what few people know is that this later aerospace hero had a rather poor and miserable childhood. At that time, he had 8 brothers and sisters, and the whole family only relied on their parents to farm to make ends meet. Later, his father died, and the family's livelihood became more difficult, and due to the poverty of the family, he was on the verge of dropping out of school for a while.
Faced with the hard-won opportunity to study, Nie Haisheng in his youth, like the majority of poor students, cherished being able to sit in the classroom and learn knowledge. He studied very hard and was consistently at the top of his grades, especially in math, often scoring perfect marks.
Wearing his sister's old clothes that didn't fit well and barefoot, Nie Haisheng finished elementary and middle school, and after being admitted to a key high school, he was already a half-sized boy and began to raise tuition fees by working on his own. At that time, every holiday, in addition to working in the fields, he would also help others carry wood and load tea, and he used his own hands to achieve his high school career, plus the school subsidy, so that he successfully completed his high school studies.
When he was a teenager, Nie Haisheng once had a very strange dream, one day he dreamed that a pair of huge wings grew on his back, fluttering and flying in the clear blue sky. In the summer of 1983, this dream came true, and after a highly competitive selection, he became a cadet of an aviation school in the Air Force. In the following years, with perseverance and unremitting efforts, he mastered excellent flight technology and theoretical knowledge, became a fighter pilot, and flew J-5, J-6 and other models.
In 1998, our army established an astronaut brigade, and Nie Haisheng stood out from more than 1,500 competitors and became the first batch of astronauts on the mainland. From aviation to aerospace, new challenges appeared in front of Nie Haisheng, and the new training of hundreds of subjects in 8 categories was like a mountain in front of him. At that time, he was 34 years old without any flinching, low-pressure hypoxia training, weightlessness training, anti-vertigo training, etc., in the two years of devil training, Nie Haisheng withstood the test, and also broke the domestic record in one fell swoop with excellent results in overweight training.
In addition to various trainings, Nie Haisheng also experienced complex and difficult theoretical studies, facing more than 30 different subjects such as dynamics, astronomy, English, etc., he seemed to return to the time when he was preparing for the college entrance examination, devoting himself to the sea of books day and night, and the walls of his home were filled with the notes he used to take notes.
In October 2005, Nie Haisheng set out on Shenzhou 6 and successfully completed the mission in the first flight. In 2011, he was promoted to major general. Since then, he has flown into space twice, leaving his footprints in the vast starry sky, witnessing the glorious course of the mainland's manned space industry along the way.
Today, Nie Haisheng is over sixty years old, and because he is no longer young, his physical function cannot support him to carry out high-intensity work as before, so he has stepped down from the post of aerospace captain. However, he did not leave his beloved aerospace career, but later served as the head of the aerospace technology department mainly responsible for the development of new spacecraft, and continued to work in the aerospace field, exerting his spare energy.
In the history of China's aerospace, Nie Haisheng burned his youth and blood, and wrote a strong stroke that belongs to himself and the world. I believe that in the future, this aerospace hero will be able to continue to make new contributions in his new position!