Astronaut transfer van Astronaut transfer van The astronaut transfer van, also known as the Astrovan, is a NASA vehicle used at the Kennedy Space Center to transport astronauts from the Operations and Checkout Building to the launch pad before a launch mission, to the pad for launch dress rehearsals, and back to Operations and Checkout Building following a shuttle landing. According to driver Ronnie King, the astronauts like the history-filled vehicle, even if it is somewhat old, and even argued against upgrading the vehicle. "We were staged to get a new one," King said, and added that word came that the rookie astronauts
Chinese as a foreign language "Arte de la Lengua Mandarina" was published in Canton in 1703. This grammar was only sketchy, however. The first important Chinese grammar was Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare's "Notitia linguae sinicae", completed in 1729 but only published in Malacca in 1831. Other important grammar texts followed, from Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat's "Élémens" (sic) "de la grammaire chinoise" in 1822 to Georg von der Gabelentz's "Chinesische Grammatik" in 1881. Glossaries for Chinese circulated among the missionaries from early on. Robert Morrison's "A Dictionary of the Chinese Language" (1815-1823), noted for its fine printing, is one of the first important Chinese dictionaries for the