The Chinese are flying elaborate dummies into space that are designed to mimic human oxygen consumption and other factors.

Speaking as a spacecraft designer, this seems to be a wierd way to go about this.

Aside from weight and center of gravity issues, is there anything that would require flying such close analogs of human passengers into space to test anything? Why the hell do the dummies have to actually consume oxygen? Don't they know how much oxygen their system puts out? And even if they think it needs more testing, why can't they just stick a couple of real guys in the capsule in a vacuum chamber on the ground to test all the life support and telemetry? Do they have a system that somehow changes parameters in zero-G?

This procedure smells like fish somewhere, although I don't know if I can put a finger on it. It's like they are trying to make their test flights look EXACTLY LIKE they are manned to any outside observer, up to and including telemetry and voice contacts.

If I were paranoid, I would suggest that they will fly real men pretending to be dummies. If something goes wrong, well, then they were just dummies, right? If this admittedly far-out scenario is true, it will be demonstrated by the Chinese not announcing the success of a manned mission until after it has landed. If they announce a manned flight before launch, then the scenario would be disproven.