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Red Dragon Rising:China's Space Program Driven by Military Ambitions
China is readying an unpiloted Shenzhou 3 spaceship for flight, a key step toward claiming a prestigious position in the heavens - becoming the third nation after Russia and the United States to attain an independent ability to launch humans into Earth orbit.
Sending people into space, and eventually to the Moon, is a piece of a much grander Chinese agenda.
China's all-purpose space schedule not only entails increasing use of satellites for weather watching, resource monitoring, and communications purposes.
A military space war-fighting strategy is also being put in place, some China-watchers claim. That line of attack calls for quick access to orbit, lofting anti-satellites, utilizing powerful ground-based lasers to blind spacecraft - all part of a technological tool kit for denying use of the "high ground" of space by an adversary.
Product quality problems
At China's Jiuquan Space Launch Center in northwestern Gansu Province, preparations are in "full swing" for flight of a Shenzhou 3 craft that now tops a Long March 2-F booster. Some reports peg the launch occurring "in the near future," while other sources suggest the craft won't be airborne until June, at the earliest.
Whatever the case, getting the automated space vehicle into orbit hasn’t been easy.
Shenzhou 3 was apparently on tap for a takeoff late last year. Problems in "product quality" held up the flight, said Hu Shixiang, deputy director of the General Armament Department of the People's Liberation Army, as reported earlier this month by China New Service in Beijing.
What mission profile the Shenzhou 3 will fly is anybody's guess, except to Chinese space authorities that remain tight-lipped and distant from routine media contact.
Piloted flight early next year?
The maiden and modest voyage of a Shenzhou took place in November 1999, circuiting the Earth 14 times, parachuting to Earth in Inner Mongolia.
Shenzhou 2 flew in January 2001, and was a far more aggressive shakeout of the craft. The multi-module space vehicle performed a nearly 7-day, 108-orbit flight, then ejected a return capsule carrying biological specimens that touched down in Inner Mongolia. How much of a "soft landing" the returning module made is still being questioned by outside observers. Meanwhile, Shenzhou 2 left its orbital module above Earth, with ground controllers putting the segment through an extensive set of maneuvers.
The flight of an unpiloted Shenzhou 3 -- and its delayed liftoff -- suggest to some Western analysts that extra-special care is being taken to prepare the craft. Speculation centers on whether this test shot, if fully successful, might be a prelude to a manned Shenzhou 4 mission.
Hu, who is also deputy commander in chief of China's human space flight program, however, has been quoted as saying that a fourth unpiloted Shenzhou is slated for this year. The first piloted Shenzhou, depending on how well the automated flight series goes, might take place in early 2003, he said.
Dual pads
Charles Vick, chief of the space policy division of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., said that a Long March 2F booster at the ready to hurl the Shenzhou 3 into space was removed from its launch pad in late July or early August of last year. The rocket was sent back to the factory, then returned later in the year, he said.
Vick said that a second, neighboring launch site to handle Long March 2F rockets is under construction. Having dual launch pads points to China's possible interest in Earth orbit rendezvous and assembly of spacecraft hardware in the future. The two launch areas are designed to work in concert, making use of the same mini-vehicle assembly building where Shenzhou-carrying boosters are prepared, he said.
"It is felt that the People's Republic of China is only racing itself. The Shenzhou 3 will launch as soon as they resolve the technical problems they have encountered since last year. It is not unusual for technical issues to hold up a new research and development program," Vick told SPACE.com.
Prestige and pride
Marcia Smith, a policy analyst for the Congressional Research Service in Washington, D.C. sees China's space program as a paced, steady-state program. "They've got goals, and continue to work at them at the pace they can support financially and technically," she said.
They are not forthcoming about their launch schedules, so pinning them down to exact plans is difficult, Smith said. "They are vague and say they'll launch a human into space by 2005. So that's a big window. But then they've also said that by 2010 they are going to have people on the Moon. And that's a very aggressive schedule," she said.
China showing an independent capability to launch humans into space will likely have an impact, but more a matter of gaining prestige and pride, Smith said. "But whether it has a global impact the way Sputnik had in 1957, I'm not sure it's going to have that level of effect," she said.
How about a China-built orbiting complex that's tended by coming-and-going Chinese astronauts?
"Whether them having a space station would pose some kind of national security issue for the rest of the world is something that I can't speculate on," Smith said.
U.S. space: access denied
But one China space watcher paints a troublesome picture.
Richard Fisher, a senior Fellow with the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, D.C., said that China's unmanned satellite program is "accelerating in an upward direction, rather quickly."
That acceleration, Fisher said, has ominous portent.
"They are preparing for a post-2005 conflict time frame. I think by 2005, or soon thereafter, an initial photo and radar satellite constellation will be in place. It will be sophisticated and large, and sufficient for Chinese needs to support a military campaign over Taiwan," he said.
Fisher said that China's piloted Shenzhou can be expected to contribute imaging or other reconnaissance data to the country's People's Liberation Army (PLA) in some form. "It will not be a purely science for science-sake undertaking," he said.
"Their manned space program is, first and foremost, a political exercise for the communist leadership," said "It is an exercise designed to prove the continuing worth of the communist government to the Chinese people," he said.
American reliance on space continues to grow, a fact not missed by China, Fisher said. In the PLA there is a very clear realization that space control, in the American sense, is something that they require as well, he said.
"China needs to be able to deny to the United States access and use of space, as they themselves exploit space to support their own forces," Fisher said.
To this end, Fisher said that researchers in China are busy at work on high-energy lasers to dazzle U.S. satellites. Another part of that nation's space arsenal are nanosatellites, tiny craft that can be used as anti-satellite weaponry. Furthermore, the Chinese have a small aircraft-shaped space shuttle, a vehicle easily modified to carry missiles sufficient for satellite interception, he said.
Full-spectrum space program
"Space is the next high ground. The Chinese understand that…and we forget that at our peril," said Dean Cheng, Research Analyst with Project Asia at The CNA Corporation in Washington, D.C.
Cheng said that China's space skills that premiered in the 1970s shouldn't be looked on as mirroring early Russian and American efforts. "There's a different force behind it," he said.
Clearly, putting up satellites has helped China's prestige in the eyes of the world. These satellites were and continue to benefit their national economy, Cheng said.
With their human spaceflight program, Cheng said, "the Chinese are pursuing a full-spectrum space program," he said, one that yields a national integrated Chinese space capability. "The manned space program for China is part of that. I'm not sure we know what that purpose is…and that's worrisome," he said.
Trump the second-tier
"If you look at the overall Chinese space program, they are pursuing everything from micro and mini-satellites, all the way up through a manned space program. Space is a major Chinese technology area that they feel they must develop and exploit," Cheng said. "They understand the importance of space, politically, economically and militarily. We need to understand that this is not some third-world country firing off a one-shot deal," he stressed. Cheng said that China would trump the second-tier space powers by having their own human space launch capability, leaving behind Japan, India, and even the European Space Agency.
"There would be a technological, political, sort of in-your-face aspect to it," Cheng said. "On the other hand, having a Shenzhou crew come back crispy-crittered would be a really bad move," Cheng added.
In the larger picture, Cheng said, China's space agenda is a force to be reckoned with, adding: "We must remember here in the United States that the new frontier may not fly only the red, white, and blue. It's the fact that now we're seeing dragons in orbit."