Word: china
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...perversion of post-Cold War thinking, the $1 trillion push to build and fly the F-35 isn't driven by huge fleets of hot new warplanes being built by - well, new perpetual bogeyman China or former perpetual bogeyman Russia. Rather, the haste is being driven by Pentagon concerns over looming shortages of F-16 and F-18 jet fighters. And what's causing those shortages? Gates made it clear that the current planes must be retired in order to save money so the military can pay for the F-35. "The Air Force, in order to be able...
...chosen to lead China into outer space are often referred to locally as "superhuman beings" - and not just because they train to cross the final frontier. Would-be taikonauts have to meet near impossible standards that are meant to weed out the less-than-flawless. Chinese astronauts cannot suffer from chronic sore throats or runny noses. They mustn't have food restrictions, strong regional accents, ringworm, cavities or scars. Bad breath, body odor and a snoring problem are all immediate disqualifiers. And if China's spacemen are expected to satisfy an unlikely string of qualifications...
...Clinical Aerospace Medicine Center in Beijing and a member of the selection panel, told the official government news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious, because this is a first for China." Ensuring that the female astronauts have already reproduced, he said, will guarantee that their family planning is not disrupted. But at least one authority, Zhang Jianqi, former deputy commander of the country's manned space program, has stated that the requirement stands because married women are more physically and psychologically mature...
...Though Nowak's epic meltdown (and her termination by NASA) almost certainly hinged on more than her working-mom status, the case does underscore the arbitrariness of China's new policy. So does a 2005 study on reproductive health and spaceflight in the International Journal of Impotence Research, which reports that about 80% of the American female astronauts who came to NASA were not mothers. The report, which considers both genders, finds no evidence that short-duration spaceflight - missions of up to nine days - "has an adverse effect on the ability of astronauts to conceive and bear healthy children...
...This remedy, however, is not likely to be of much interest to China, whose one-child policy demonstrates the nation's ongoing commitment to curbing - not encouraging - population growth. Beijing, it seems, is not so much concerned with disrupting family planning - if it were, it might consider astronaut applications from women who are certain they do not want children or broaden the prerequisite to include spacemen - but with the image of the women it recruits to represent it on the galactic stage. In China, being a married mother is, arguably, as much a mark of excellence as sweet-smelling breath...