{"id":76512,"date":"2018-03-04T16:43:24","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T00:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/china-is-recruiting-a-new-wave-of-astronauts-from-its-civilians"},"modified":"2018-03-06T15:02:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T23:02:23","slug":"china-is-recruiting-a-new-wave-of-astronauts-from-its-civilians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/china-is-recruiting-a-new-wave-of-astronauts-from-its-civilians","title":{"rendered":"China is recruiting a new wave of astronauts from its civilians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/china-is-recruiting-a-new-wave-of-astronauts-from-its-civilians.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>China is intensifying its push into space, and broadening its astronaut recruiting.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese government, which plans to increase the number of manned missions in its military-backed space program to around two a year, will soon begin recruiting civilian astronauts, Yang Liwei, deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, told reporters on the sidelines of a ceremonial parliament session this weekend. That\u2019s a departure from China\u2019s practice of drawing its astronauts from among air force pilots.<\/p>\n<p>Yang\u2014who was China\u2019s first man in space in 2003\u2014said the trainees could include private-sector maintenance engineers, payload specialists, pilots, scientists, and people from universities and other research institutions, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/asia_pacific\/china-to-recruit-civilian-astronauts-boost-crewed-missions\/2018\/03\/04\/d7a56dbe-1f84-11e8-98f5-ceecfa8741b6_story.html?utm_term=.fbd2df66a225\">Associated Press<\/a>. More women are also being encouraged to apply. The loosening of restrictions comes amid NASA\u2019s announcement that it has recruited America\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/1001007\/you-are-the-best-of-us-nasa-just-announced-americas-most-competitive-class-of-astronauts-yet\/\">most competitive class of astronauts ever<\/a>, as well as other initiatives like Canada\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/968252\/a-hunger-games-style-search-for-canadas-next-astronauts-is-happening-online\/\"><em>Hunger Games <\/em>-style search<\/a> for new astronauts on the internet.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/1221194\/china-will-recruit-civilian-astronauts-as-it-intensifies-its-push-into-space\/\">https:\/\/qz.com\/1221194\/china-will-recruit-civilian-astronaut...nto-space\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China is intensifying its push into space, and broadening its astronaut recruiting. The Chinese government, which plans to increase the number of manned missions in its military-backed space program to around two a year, will soon begin recruiting civilian astronauts, Yang Liwei, deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, told reporters on the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1490,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-government","category-military","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76576,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76512\/revisions\/76576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}