As Americans question the purpose of manned space flight after the loss of the shuttle, the world's newest space power, China, is recreating the glory days of Apollo.Posted on 03/13/2003 11:39:37 PM PST by Destro
China Works to Put Astronauts in Orbit
By JOSEPH KAHN
As Americans question the purpose of manned space flight after the loss of the shuttle, the world's newest space power, China, is recreating the glory days of Apollo.
SHANGHAI, March 11 — Even as Americans question the purpose of manned space flight after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, the world's newest space power, China, is recreating the glory days of Apollo.
In October China plans to send its first astronauts into orbit on its Shenzhou spacecraft. When their re-entry capsule parachutes back to the grassy steppes of Inner Mongolia, the Chinese hope to have exceeded American and Soviet records for the number of men, length of time in orbit and complexity of operations on a maiden manned voyage in space. China plans to have two or three astronauts aboard for the first flight, while American and Russia put one man in orbit on their first tries.
But China's aims go far beyond low-earth orbit. Beijing is pursuing multibillion-dollar programs to construct a space station and explore the moon. Its scientists are energetically, if still dreamily, planning a colony on Mars.
China's Communist leaders are taking a page from the American playbook of the 1960's to spur technological advances, give China a place at the pinnacle of military power and bolster the popularity of a governing party that still faces enormous social and economic problems.
"Space technology does not belong to the rich countries alone," said Zhang Houying, a scientific director of the Shenzhou program. "In science there is only a No. 1, no No. 2. We'd like to lead in contributing to mankind." China's space program, controlled by the reflexively suspicious military, has long been shielded in secrecy. The program's managers do not disclose their budget, launch details or even the names of the 14 astronauts in training at a guarded complex outside Beijing.
But the country's top officials make clear that they intend to challenge the United States in space, where it has faced little competition in manned space flight since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Barring a quick breakthrough in NASA's review of what happened to the Columbia, the American shuttle fleet could still be grounded when China becomes the third nation to send its own astronauts into orbit, providing an extra jolt of publicity that the Chinese believe will add to the prestige of the mission.
Chinese officials also argue that the United States has wasted wealth and energy on the complex and inherently risky shuttle. That gives China, though still at least a generation behind in space technology, a chance to catch up.
China intends to reach the moon by 2010. Some here belittle the American moon landing in 1969, proclaiming they will do more than "plant a red flag and pick up rocks," as one space planner put it.
Officials say they aim to exploit the moon's resources. They covet its apparently abundant supply of helium-3, a rare isotope on earth that some scientists believe may prove to be a clean fuel of choice when used in special nuclear fusion reactors that would have to be developed.
"We've got to seize this moment when other countries have no comprehensive plan to return to the moon," Luan Enjie, the head of China's National Space Administration, told the official New China News Agency this month.
The cost of these efforts is staggering for a developing country, even one with a decade-long streak of fast economic growth. Foreign experts estimate China's annual spending on space programs at $1.3 billion to $3 billion. While that is no more than one-fifth of NASA's budget, it is at least 10 times what Russia spends on its much-depleted space program.
China's celestial ambitions are fueled as much by defense as discovery. The push into space has helped improve the range and accuracy of ballistic missiles and provided sophisticated tools for military reconnaissance.
Military strategists now boast that the January mission of Shenzhou IV, the precursor to the manned voyage, showed that China had mastered technology to remotely alter cruise trajectories, a skill it considers critical to frustrating America's planned missile defense system.
Mutual mistrust, in fact, may be contributing to the beginning of a new space race.
When the United States imposed sanctions on China for weapons proliferation in 1999, it targeted the country's commercial satellite launchings, an important source of money for the space program.
The sanctions apply to any satellite made with even minor American components, like microchips, and they have crippled China's once lucrative launching industry.
Though it is arguably the world's third space power, China has not been invited to join the 16 nations taking part in the International Space Station. Chinese scientists said in interviews that they were enraged when the United States denied them visas to attend the World Space Congress last year in Houston. "The Chinese perceive themselves to be deliberately excluded and slighted on even small things by the U.S.," said Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on China's space efforts at the Naval War College in Rhode Island. "That has pushed them to pump more money into their own program."
It was the United States, though, that inadvertently gave a boost to China's earliest efforts to reach space some 50 years ago. Qian Xuesen, formerly a leading rocket engineer at the California Institute of Technology, was expelled to China during the McCarthy era for suspected Communist sympathies. He designed China's first missiles and is now regarded as the father of its space program.
Under his guidance, China launched its first satellite in 1970. It blared the Maoist anthem "The East Is Red" from orbit. But the country's manned space program did not begin in earnest until 1992 with the start of the current 921 project.
The program has not been flawless. Long March booster rockets suffered fiery failures in the mid-1990's. Officials predicted that a Chinese would orbit the earth by 1999, the 50th anniversary of Communist rule. In fact, it was not until 1999 that China managed the first trial voyage of an unmanned spaceship.
But as the manned mission approaches, leaders have begun stirring up patriotic support. Stamps and phone cards imprinted with images of the spaceship have become collectors' items. Space fairs have shown mock-ups of a robotic lunar vehicle and a Mars colony.
The military has dropped hints about the rigorous preparation of its astronauts, called taikonauts. State television has offered glimpses of them floating weightless in training sessions.
The Chinese with the right stuff, like many of the first American astronauts of the Mercury and Gemini programs, are all fighter pilots. They average 30 years old, weigh about 145 pounds and are about 5 feet 6 inches tall, military officials say, ideally suited to minimize load and maximize maneuverability in flight.
"Appropriate and medium in stature, quick in movement and unafraid of hardship, China astronauts are clearly superior," said Su Shuangning, a space program director, was quoted as telling the state media.
Though such talk has made space a point of pride, the program does not have universal support.
Some scientists say privately that their country may be emulating the wrong achievements. When the United States and Russia embarked on their space programs more than 40 years ago, they were already leaders in making conventional aircraft. China, despite repeated attempts, does not build airliners or high-quality fighter jets.
It is also unclear how much of China's space program represents a scientific breakthrough. The Shenzhou is a knockoff of the Russian Soyuz. Like the Soyuz, it has three sections: a propulsion module, a pressurized re-entry capsule, and a forward module used as work space in orbit.
Chinese astronauts have been instructed at Russia's training center, Star City. Chinese scientists acknowledge that they bought life support systems from Russia.
More pointedly, the State Department says two leading American companies, Hughes Electronics and Boeing, helped China improve the guidance, telemetry and aerodynamics of the Long March rockets in the late 1990's.
Because the rockets have military as well as civilian uses, the companies were charged with violating export control laws. This month they agreed to pay $32 million to settle the charges.
Chinese officials deny that their space program depends heavily on foreigners. Officials have dismissed the American charges as laughable. They say they have imported some Russian technology like the Soyuz but have made innumerable improvements. For example, the Shenzhou's forward module has a collapsible solar panel and separate thrusters, so that it can remain in space after the astronauts return to earth, something the Russian Soyuz could not do.
Phillip Clark, a space expert at Molniya Space Consultancy in London, said China had benefited from studying what others had achieved in space, but that China's indigenous efforts had allowed it to skip ahead. "There's no reason for them to reinvent the wheel," he said. "But they are doing things their own way."
Interesting future shaping up.
The question is; will the Chinese moon colony speak Cantonese or Mandarin? :)
They are the ones that would be planting a "red" flag.
Not likely to happen though, the Chinese first have to master the art of driving an automobile, and good peripheral vision is a must when landing on the moon.
In addition, chopsticks are totally useless in zero g.
Like I said we need to get off our butts and get serious about Space Exploration or SlickWillie's statement about the US not being the biggest super power on the block is going to come true. And thanks to SlickWillie who gave china the computer and missile technology to be able to compete with US they have a heck of a better chance at getting ahead.
No kidding.
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