A few days ago, he was just Colonel (上校) Yang; Few people knew his name or recognized his face. But last Thursday, when he came back to the earth after a 21-hour trip to space, Yang Liwe's smile was seen across the world above the magic words:“China’s first spaceman”.

    The 38-year-old astronaut was sent into space at 9 a. m. last Wednesday by China’s Shenzhou V spacecraft, which orbited the earth 14 times. He landed safely at 6: 23 a. m. the next day, making China the third country to successfully send a person into space, after the former Soviet Union and the US.

    Yang was satisfied with his job. “I have seen many landing scenes before on video, and I think ours was one of the most successful,” he said on a special plane to Beijing after landing.

    Born into an ordinary family in Liaoning Province, he became a pilot in the Chinese Air Force in 1987, spending 1, 350 hours in the air. He joined the Chinese space programmer 11 years later.

    While in space, Yang recorded everything he saw as well as showing China’s national flag and the United Nations’ flag to the people watching on TV at home. He also ate a meal of diced chicken and fried rice, before taking a 3-hour nap. The whole project went according to plan, but space exploration is not as easy as it seems.

    Anyone who saw the destruction of the US space shuttle Columbia in February this year will know that Yang took a great risk.

    He experienced extremely high temperatures, while the gravitational forces (重力) on takeoff and landing were strong enough to force tears from his eyes.

    He has spent five years training to become a spaceman.

    "I eat all of my meals at the space programmer’s dinning room and have never been able to take my son to kindergarten," he said. "I’ve never met his teachers."

    But becoming China’s first spaceman has made all the effort worthwhile.

    “When I boarded the spacecraft for the first time, I couldn’t help feeling excited,”he said.“I decided that I had to fly it.”

    To Chinese people, Yang is now a hero. One visitor to a Xinhua news agency online forum (网上论坛) said:“Yang’s trip is a giant leap forward for China.”

    Officials say the next Shenzhou will be launched by 2005. China also plans to develop space walking and a space lab.

1. What is the main idea of the story?

    A. China’s first manned space flight.

    B. A hero with great courage

    C. The first Chinese man in space

    D. How Yang Liwei became China’s first spaceman

2. How long did each of Yang’s orbits take on average?

    A. 1 hour.　　　　　　  B. 1. 5 hours.　　　　 C. 6 hours.　　　　    D. The story didn’t mention.

3. Why did the writer mention the gravitational forces on takeoff and landing?

    A. To stress the hardship and the spaceman had to experience.

    B. Because it was a very special experience for any spacemen.

    C. To stress how much training he had to do to prepare for the flight

    D. To show that Yang is lucky.

4. Why did the writer use“giant leap”in the title?

    A. Because the space flight marked China’s great progress in the field of space exploration.

    B. Because Neil Armstrong said it was a "giant leap" for mankind when he first set foot on the moon.

    C. Because the space flight was a huge success.

    D. Both A and B.

Giant leap for China

    A few days ago, he was just Colonel (上校) Yang; Few people knew his name or recognized his face. But last Thursday, when he came back to the earth after a 21-hour trip to space, Yang Liwe's smile was seen across the world above the magic words:“China’s first spaceman”.

    The 38-year-old astronaut was sent into space at 9 a. m. last Wednesday by China’s Shenzhou V spacecraft, which orbited the earth 14 times. He landed safely at 6: 23 a. m. the next day, making China the third country to successfully send a person into space, after the former Soviet Union and the US.

    Yang was satisfied with his job. “I have seen many landing scenes before on video, and I think ours was one of the most successful,” he said on a special plane to Beijing after landing.

    Born into an ordinary family in Liaoning Province, he became a pilot in the Chinese Air Force in 1987, spending 1, 350 hours in the air. He joined the Chinese space programmer 11 years later.

    While in space, Yang recorded everything he saw as well as showing China’s national flag and the United Nations’ flag to the people watching on TV at home. He also ate a meal of diced chicken and fried rice, before taking a 3-hour nap. The whole project went according to plan, but space exploration is not as easy as it seems.

    Anyone who saw the destruction of the US space shuttle Columbia in February this year will know that Yang took a great risk.

    He experienced extremely high temperatures, while the gravitational forces (重力) on takeoff and landing were strong enough to force tears from his eyes.

    He has spent five years training to become a spaceman.

    "I eat all of my meals at the space programmer’s dinning room and have never been able to take my son to kindergarten," he said. "I’ve never met his teachers."

    But becoming China’s first spaceman has made all the effort worthwhile.

    “When I boarded the spacecraft for the first time, I couldn’t help feeling excited,”he said.“I decided that I had to fly it.”

    To Chinese people, Yang is now a hero. One visitor to a Xinhua news agency online forum (网上论坛) said:“Yang’s trip is a giant leap forward for China.”

    Officials say the next Shenzhou will be launched by 2005. China also plans to develop space walking and a space lab.

1. What is the main idea of the story?

    A. China’s first manned space flight.

    B. A hero with great courage

    C. The first Chinese man in space

    D. How Yang Liwei became China’s first spaceman

2. How long did each of Yang’s orbits take on average?

    A. 1 hour.　　　　　　  B. 1. 5 hours.　　　　 C. 6 hours.　　　　    D. The story didn’t mention.

3. Why did the writer mention the gravitational forces on takeoff and landing?

    A. To stress the hardship and the spaceman had to experience.

    B. Because it was a very special experience for any spacemen.

    C. To stress how much training he had to do to prepare for the flight

    D. To show that Yang is lucky.

4. Why did the writer use“giant leap”in the title?

    A. Because the space flight marked China’s great progress in the field of space exploration.

    B. Because Neil Armstrong said it was a "giant leap" for mankind when he first set foot on the moon.

    C. Because the space flight was a huge success.

    D. Both A and B.

Which is sillier: denying we ever went to the moon or trying to convince the true non-believers?
Once upon a time—July 20, 1969, to be specific – two men got out of their little spaceship and wandered around on the moon for a while. Ten more men walked on the moon over the next three and a half years. The end.
Unfortunately, not quite. A fair number of Americans think that this whole business of moon landings really is a fairy tale. They believe that the landings were a big hoax (骗局) staged in the Mojave Desert, to convince everyone that U.S. technology was the “best” in the whole wide world.
Which is the harder thing to do: Send men to the moon or make believe we did? The fact is that the physics behind sending people to the moon is simple. You can do it with computers whose entire memory capacities can now fit on chips the size of postage stamps and that cost about as much as, well, a postage stamp. I know you can because we did.
However, last fall NASA considered spending $15,000 on a public-relations campaign to convince the unimpressed that Americans had in fact gone to the moon. That idea was mostly a reaction to a Fox television program, first aired in February 2001, that claimed to expose the hoax. The show’s creator is a publicity hound (猎狗) who has lived up to the name in more ways than one by hounding Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. Mr. X (as I will call him, thereby denying him the joyous sight of his name in print) recently followed Buzz Aldrin around and called him “a thief, liar and coward” until the 72-year-old astronaut finally lost it and hit the 37-year-old Mr. X in the face.
Anyway, NASA’s publicity campaign began to slow down. The nonbelievers took the campaign as NASA’s effort to hide something while the believers said that $15,000 to convince people that the world was round — I mean, that we had gone to the moon — was simply a waste of money. (Actually, the $15,000 was supposed to pay for an article by James E. Oberg, an astronomy writer who, with Aldrin, has contributed to Scientific American.)
If NASA’s not paying Oberg, perhaps it could put the money to good use by hiring two big guys to drag Neil Armstrong out of the house. Armstrong is an extremely private man, but he is also the first man on the moon, so maybe he has a duty to be a bit more outspoken about the experience. Or NASA could just buy Aldrin a commemorate plaque (纪念匾) for his recent touch on the face of Mr. X.
【小题1】We can learn from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that some Americans believe _______.