According to Rednova, a team of 14 "Taikonauts" has arrived at the launch facility. Two will probably be selected for the first flight. Soviet hardware, US organization. I wonder if the US will expose them if it blows up on the pad?

Of course, with today's publicly available sattellite imagery, it won't (or rather, shouldn't) just be the US government keeping an eye on them. However, this does require a set of journalists actually getting off their asses and researching something instead of just regurgitating press releases, so who knows.

Aviation Week will almost certainly be on the ball though. Time to renew that subscription...