Three astronauts entered the space station: demographic imagination triggered by the 43% increase in space population.

With the arrival of three China astronauts in China's first space station on June 17, 20265438, French astronaut Thomas? Peske then analyzed the changes of the space population and concluded that the space population increased by 43% this week. This seemingly simple statistical data contains rich demographic imagination. On the basis of reviewing the evolution of spatial population, this paper analyzes the demographic significance of spatial population and "spatial city"

At 9: 22 on June 1 July, 20265438, Beijing time, the Long March II F- 12 carrier rocket carrying the Shenzhou 12 manned spacecraft was ignited and launched at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, and three astronauts, Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo, were successfully sent into space.

On June 7th, 200212006 18: 48 Beijing time, astronauts Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo successively entered the Tianhe core cabin, marking the first time for China people to enter their own space station.

The next day, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who was on a mission to the International Space Station, tweeted that "with China sending three astronauts to their space station, the space population increased by 43% this week".

In this way, the International Space Station * * currently has seven astronauts, so if three Chinese astronauts are added, the space population will increase by 3/7=42.85%, which is about 43%. This seemingly simple mathematical algorithm contains a lot of demographic information and even leads to a series of demographic imagination.

Space station welcomes more astronauts.

French astronaut Thomas? Peske formally put forward the concept of space population, that is, the population of human beings in space refers to the number of astronauts in space.

According to historical records, the first astronaut in the world was yuri gagarin of the Soviet Union. In April, he went into space on 196 1 and circled the earth in an orbit with the highest altitude of 30 1 km. It lasted 1 hour for 48 minutes, and returned safely at 10:55 in the morning and landed in Smelov village, Saratov state, completing the world's first manned space flight and realizing the human desire to enter space.

Since then, the Soviet Union, the United States and China have sent humans into space.

On June 5438+10/October 65438+May 2003, China's first astronaut Yang Liwei stayed in space for 2 1 hour and 23 minutes in the Shenzhou 5. According to incomplete statistics, there were 10 astronauts in China from June 2003 to June 2026.

In the United States, people who travel above 80 kilometers (50 miles) above sea level are called astronauts. The space flight defined by the International Aviation Federation (FAI) needs to exceed100km. Therefore, the size of space astronauts counted by the United States and the International Aviation Federation is different.

According to the definition of the United States, according to earlier statistics, as of April 8, 2004, there were 440 people who spent a crew day in space and enjoyed 98 crew days in space. According to the definition of the International Aviation Federation, there may be only 434 people out of 440.

Since the first human flight in 196 1, astronauts from 38 countries have successively flown.

Tereshkova, an astronaut of the former Soviet Union, went into space in June 1963 on Dongfang 6, becoming the first female astronaut.

The youngest astronaut is Titov, who was less than 26 years old when he went into space on Dongfang 2.

The oldest is American astronaut john glenn, who was 77 years old when STS-95 went into space.

The record of the longest stay in space is that Russian astronaut Gennady Padalka stayed in space for 879 days from 1998 to 20 15.

According to incomplete statistics, at present, the largest number of trips to space is seven, which is kept by Jerry L. Ross and Franklin Zhang-Diaz.

At present, there are seven people on the International Space Station, including three from the United States, two from Russia, France 1 and Japan 1. There are three people from China on the China Space Station. It can be predicted that China Space Station and International Space Station will welcome more astronauts in the future.

Demographic significance of spatial population

The space population is not an alien, but a human population, but the living place of the human population has changed from the earth to space.

The concept of space population seems accidental, but it has its inevitability, which is the inevitability of human exploration of space.

In the process of human exploration of space, the human population comes to the space field through rockets or spaceships, where they work, live and even entertain, enjoying a different space experience from the earth.

In fact, judging from the development trend of science and technology, the lifestyle of human beings in the space field is generally in line with the trend of the earth. For example, humans can play table tennis in space, sleep lying down, take a shower standing up and so on. The development of science and technology is also basically developing towards the trend that human beings can basically enjoy the same lifestyle as the earth in the space field.

The difference is that human beings live in space and have a different perspective from the earth.

From the demographic point of view, the space population and the earth population do have different analytical perspectives.

At present, human beings have not given birth in space, so the space population is basically not born; Humans will not choose to die in space (except for space accidents). So far, all astronauts sent into space have basically returned as scheduled, so the space population has basically not died; What space population can exist is population migration.

Theoretically, the space population is a migrating city, with no birth or death, only migration. This space city, which has no birth, no death and only migration, has unique demographic significance.

Humans are experiencing a low fertility rate. In some city countries, such as Singapore, the total fertility rate is always lower than 1.3, which mainly depends on population migration to ensure population stability. Many big cities in China, such as Shanghai, Peking, Macau and Hongkong, have extremely low fertility rates. In addition, the fertility level in the three northeastern provinces is also at a very low level. Although these cities are not without death, the birth rate tends to be very low. This represents a typical feature, that is, a city or city-state that relies entirely on population migration. In other words, some cities are developing into a typical space city.

Such a space city can be idealized as a young city without fertility troubles and fear of death.

Immigration: the population imagination of space city

Demography seems to be a boring subject with good data and models. In fact, demography is an imaginative subject.

The space population has left a rich imagination for human beings, providing a new perspective for the human population to make full use of the vast cosmic resources, and also opening another window for the human population to understand its own development.

Tsiolkovsky (1857- 1935), the originator of human space technology and the father of space flight, has been committed to finding new settlements in the outer space where human beings live. He said in Aviation Magazine: "The earth is the cradle of mankind, but mankind cannot be bound in the cradle forever."

To this end, he has written many works, studying the design of rockets, steering thrusters, multistage superchargers, space stations, airlocks for introducing spacecraft into space vacuum and closed-loop biological systems for providing food and oxygen for space stations. He boldly predicted: "Choose the crops with the biggest harvest, and under the best growth conditions, every inch of land on the space farm may be enough to feed space immigrants."

In Gulliver's Travels, a novel by British writer jonathan swift, it is mentioned that Lapda, a flying island country, is an earlier space city.

Miyazaki Hayao, a Japanese cartoonist, vividly portrayed Lapda as a city of space through the cartoon City in the Sky.

Many literary works and movies have boldly imagined the future space city, such as French director Zhu An? "Against the World" 20 12 is a sci-fi romance directed by Soranna, which tells the story of limited communication between two worlds that are only upside down by a giant tower.

In the future, the interaction and communication between human population and space population or two different worlds will arouse imagination.

Immigrating into space was once the idea of many scientists and entrepreneurs. Elon Musk, 37, said that his long-term goal is to transfer humans from the Earth to other planets and ensure that this process is safe and cheap enough.

Building a space city for people to live and work for a long time is not only the dream of mankind, but also the necessity of the development of space technology, which is of great significance to the sustainable development of mankind.

Brief introduction of the author

Huang China, Associate Research Fellow of Population and Development Research Center, Vice Chairman of Social Computing and Social Intelligence Committee of China Artificial Intelligence Society, Director of China Population Society and Director of Beijing Population Society.

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