China performs space walk, rips off Star Trek
The logo of the China National Space Administration looks strangely familiar
Congratulations to the People’s Republic of China, which has launched their third crewed mission to space and Zhai Zhigang, age 41, has successfully performed his nation’s first space walk. The spacecraft, the Shenzhou 7, has a crew of three astronauts—or taikonauts, as the Chinese call them (cf. cosmonaut). Besides China, only the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia have launched people into space.
China hopes to establish a space station by 2020 and also has plans to land people on the Moon and, eventually, Mars. They made the news last year when they shot down an old satellite in a test of their military abilities; this was largely seen as a provocative act and a possible threat to the United States, which maintains considerable assets in space for both communication, intelligence, and scientific purposes.
I am also struck, however, by the unoriginality of the China National Space Administration logo. Just look at it. Doesn’t it remind you of something? If you’re a fan of Star Trek, I’ll bet that it does. Compare:
One possible origin of the CNSA logo
Regardless of where the logo came from, Godspeed to the three taikonauts, Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming, and Jing Haipeng.
//Jacob's//Weblog// 
Well, this post is turning out much more popular than I’d anticipated. Despite not posting anything on Monday, Sept 29th was my busiest day ever, with 80 hits–42 of them for this post. And what is driving people here? Searches. And look at the search strings that are directing people here:
cnsa star trek (x 6),
cnsa logo star trek (x 5),
star trek logo chinese space (x 2),
chinese national space administration star trek (x 2),
chinese space administration star trek (x 2),
china national space administration logo (x 2), and
china space logo star trek (x 2)
plus many others with just 1 instance
Looks like I’m not the only one who noticed that the CNSA logo was derived from Star Trek, which, a friend informs me, is very popular in the People’s Republic.
The three taikonauts landed safely on Sunday.