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yuhangyuan
China's first manned space mission may launch within the next couple of weeks.
The official Chinese word for an astronaut is "yuhangyuan", but some space buffs have been calling them "taikonauts" for years. Can't we just drop the use of different words for astronauts launched by different countries, and call them all "astronauts" as long as we're using English? The astronaut/cosmonaut usage is an awkward Sixties Space Race relic, not something you'd want to extend arbitrarily into a future in which all sorts of entities may launch people into space.
The official Chinese word for an astronaut is "yuhangyuan", but some space buffs have been calling them "taikonauts" for years. Can't we just drop the use of different words for astronauts launched by different countries, and call them all "astronauts" as long as we're using English? The astronaut/cosmonaut usage is an awkward Sixties Space Race relic, not something you'd want to extend arbitrarily into a future in which all sorts of entities may launch people into space.
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(Anonymous) 2003-09-30 12:54 pm (UTC)(link)-AN