Or you could also look at it like this: the Chinese have made it to the early-70s "Skylab" stage (minus the Apollo program that came before it), the Russians are content to stick with 1990s Soyuz/Mir/early ISS technology and their orbital shots. NASA has little to show of their manned space program since the shuttle retired in 2011, but still leads the world in robotic exploration of the solar system.
Hardly as dire a situation as you paint.
Space is portrayed as having been there, done that. Worse, there are some trying to portray it as a rich man's place with the advent of space tourism and thus not a place government should be except to regulate it.
With regards to NASA, the shuttles, and such. Losing the shuttle was probably the best thing to happen to NASA long term. In the short term it wasn't and not because of the decision but because the management is so dysfunctional they don't know what they need. They have enough wants to fill a Sears Christmas catalog but none spark the imagination of the public and as such get little support.
They need a good spokesman, a long term goal, and some flashy steps that are achieved along the way to keep people interested and thereby keeping the funding alive. I would love to see a permanent moon settlement for more than just a few astronauts, more like a few dozen. Tie it in eventually with private trips to help keep it up and expanding...
I laugh at all this talk about going to Mars to save the human race. We're just going to show up, if we get there at all, and fuck it up just as hard as we have on Earth. We're a species of idiotic assholes.
Humans are humans - and at least currently it appears we learn and improve all the time.
Astronaut is still valid name for crew member of a spacecraft in any nation.
Currently there are only two - Russia and China - so it's great we can all live vicariously through their achievements!
Cosmonauts = Russian Taikonauts = Chinese Astronauts = Western
A quick search of matches in actual translated texts returns 'astronauts' as the term in the vast majority, and a few cases of 'spaceman' and 'man in space'. 人 'ren' in Chinese is genderless.
Taikonaut is however used by the Global Times and China Daily, tabloid and broadsheet papers published in the mainland. Am pretty sure the term wasn't termed in China, however. Otherwise the pinyin would be correct.
Emphasis on principle. Until they confirm that their intent is to be compatible and some testing is done to verify it, I don't think anyone wants to dock.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/astronaut
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cosmonaut
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/taikonaut
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/astronaut
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cosmonaut
[ Merriam-Webster doesn't define Taïkonaut ]
I just wanted to highligth that only NASA (or English speaker world) call their astronaut "astronaut". In europe, we call them spationauts. And in russia, they call them "cosmonauts".
