Replies

Report: China to Orbit Human on Oct. 15 *** BEIJING - The shape of China's first manned space mission came into sharper focus Wednesday with reports that a human crew will orbit the Earth briefly next week after a live-television launch trumpets the government's accomplishment to its citizens and the world.

The finalists to be the first Chinese astronauts converged upon a hotel in a northwestern town as the mission neared, another news report said. And in Indonesia, Premier Wen Jiabao said the craft, the Shenzhou 5, would take off with a human crew "soon, very soon."

………….. Chinese astronauts have been training for years, though the military-linked program has never identified the trainees. Beijing has nurtured the dream of manned space flight since at least the early 1970s, when its first program was scrapped during the upheaval of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. The current effort began in 1992 under the code name Project 921.

Four unmanned Shenzhou capsules have been launched, orbiting the Earth for up to a week and landing by parachute in the northern grasslands of China's Inner Mongolia region. Wen, asked about the launch at a regional meeting in Bali, Indonesia, said it was around the corner. "This will be very soon, very soon," Wen said. Asked about a specific date, he demurred: "We haven't decided."***

The Military Space Service: Why It's Time Has Come*** As a relevant example, in recent Congressional Testimony, the Marine Corps has presented a compelling emerging need to overcome the constraints of thick air travel and non-permissive airspace for responsive expeditionary transport and insertion. As an emerging Joint requirement, it recognizes that Marine, SOCOM, and other Joint Forces will require heretofore-unimaginable assault support speed, range, and altitude in order to achieve strategic surprise in the future. The link to space is clear. It also illustrates how the Corps' vision of inevitable future Joint requirements are largely predictable through the projection of current technical possibilities, just as it was for General Billy Mitchell almost a century before. This should encourage a revisitation of a National Security Act that does not reflect the impact emerging NSS technological opportunities will have on the nature of warfare.

Conclusion

The existing cultural dilemma is unfair to the Department of the Air Force, and will lead to the delay of our national preparations for the comprehensive role that space will play in the future of warfare. Unlike America's energetic recovery and entrance into WWII, strategic surprise in the realm of NSS could cause damage to our national security from which we cannot recover. We will be wise to learn history's lessons and take the initiative, while we still have the initiative. Establishment of a Space Service now is a sound preparation for an uncertain, yet imaginable future.***