This tv report from China state television channel CCTV shows part of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft being transferred to its launch site where the video’s translation says there will be airlock tests
This CCTV news report is in English with some translation, refers to a flight “sometime in October” and say that the next step after this is the establishment of a space station
This CCTV report (embedded above) shows water tank training and a mockup of the orbital module with the airlocks. In the earlier videos below that are older chinese languague news reports we can see that the same film of a water tank training exercise is being repeated
Interestingly we don’t see egress or ingress activity around the mockup in the tank. Looking at the circular aperture on top of the module it doesn’t quite look wide enough for the astronaut to climb through easily with the suit
The module itself in the picture at the top of this post is not very big at all. I think that two of the three astronauts will move from the capsule into the module and the entire module is the airlock and it will be completely depressed for the EVA
Some of the long shots show how large the water tank is and how it dwarfs the module and divers. Do you think that tank is sized to contain a space station mockup?
