It is an air vehicle like an ordinary airplane and as is learned it can fly in atmosphere, midair or outer space that has come within the ken of Chinese scientists.

Zhuang Fenggan, academician of China Aeronautics Science &Technology Group said Friday that researches are being made into core technological problems for developing a smart brand-new air vehicle of China's. As tasked by the country's "Major Aerospace Security Problems", specific work arrangements and allocations have been made by concerned state departments to back up the Herculean effort.

According to Zhuang, the so-called air vehicle should be allowed to have full latitude for taking off or flight in outer space, atmosphere or midair. "It must be like an ordinary airplane and when getting refueled with propellants it must be back on its mission in time" So far, no space shuttle and aerospaceplane have met the like requirement.

Indispensable are solutions to six key technological problems contributing to the development of China's new air vehicle: hypersonic technology, hyper-dive flying technology, long-distance flying technology, hyper stealth technology, and ultralight, ultrastrong, heatproof and high impact craft structure technology, precision and reliability technology. These call for breakthroughs without doubt and titanic effort by Chinese scientists for solutions to be found to the 7 core sci-tech problems listed.

(People's Daily June 1, 2002)