Cox News Service October 02, 2003
CHINA GOES BOLDLY WHERE TWO COUNTRIES HAVE GONE BEFORE
By JULIE CHAO
Sometime this month, from a town at the edge of the Gobi Desert and not far from the terminus of the Great Wall, one man, or maybe two, will blast into space.
After four unmanned trial flights, China hopes to launch and successfully return its yuhangyuan _ Chinese for astronaut, or literally translated, "universe traveler" _ aboard a spacecraft called Shenzhou V, adapted from the Russian Soyuz design.
China would become only the third nation in history to achieve manned spaceflight. The feat would follow the Soviet Union and the United States by 42 years, but would not diminish its significance for a country eager to join the ranks of the world's leading powers.
"For the Chinese nation, it is a big event," said Zhai Liyuan, a physicist with the China Association for Science and Technology. "In modern history, China has always been behind in science and technology. Now China can be at the same level as the world powers."
China's reach for the stars doesn't end with a low-earth orbit. It has stated its ambitions to explore the moon, build a space station and send a probe to Mars by 2020.
The propaganda value of such achievements is undeniable. It would help bestow legitimacy on a Communist leadership struggling with a multitude of social and economic ills, while galvanizing national pride and proving the country's technological prowess, analysts say.
But beyond the prestige, Beijing hopes its space program will bring technical benefits to the military and help spur advances in communications, medical technology and other fields, much as the Apollo program did for the United States in the 1960s.
A government white paper on the space program, published in 2000, acknowledges an attempt to recapture a bit of China's ancient glory.
"The Chinese nation created a glorious civilization in the early stage of mankind's history," it said. "The gunpowder 'rocket' invented by the ancient Chinese was the embryo of modern space rockets."
The white paper goes on to call the space industry "an integral part of the state's comprehensive development strategy."
"Practically speaking, the main goal for China is, like the United States did, to accelerate high-level scientific developments," said Zhai. "Internationally, the vast majority of patents, inventions and scientific discoveries are from the developed countries. China has very few." Although China has been launching satellites for more than 30 years, the manned space program was started partly as a reaction to the advanced U.S. military technology displayed in the 1991 Gulf War, according to Charles Vick, a consultant for globalsecurity.org and an expert on the Chinese and Russian space programs.
"The information warfare that we developed and utilized during that war was overwhelming," said Vick. "It had a high impact on their military. They realized how weak they actually were."
The following year, China began its program to send a man into space.
"The key to modern wars lies in outer space, where the most advanced national defense appliance of the United States, the missile defense system, is established," said Chen Ning Yang, a physicist and American Nobel laureate now associated with Tsinghua University, in a recent interview with Hong Kong media.
More generally, the military will benefit from gains in associated industries, including materials, electronics and robotic systems, Vick said. It would also benefit from improvements in procedures such as controlling and maneuvering spacecraft and eventually docking a spacecraft.
The space program also sends a strong message to political rival Taiwan, noted Dean Cheng, senior Asia analyst with the CNA Corporation, a non-profit think tank.
One the one hand, it can be viewed as "a cudgel ... a means of reminding Taiwan that the Chinese can attain the strategic high ground," Cheng said, while also being an appeal to the people of Taiwan to "feel some of the glory" of the Chinese nation.
Competition with India, which has announced plans for a lunar mission in 2008, is prodding China.
"Chinese scientists think if they don't intensify their efforts, they will fall behind India," Zhai said. "It's a worry for them."
The Shenzhou (or "divine vessel") spacecraft, based on the Soyuz but overhauled by Chinese scientists, first took off in 1999. It orbited for one day. Subsequent launches were for seven days each and increasingly complex. Shenzhou III carried a human dummy and Shenzhou IV had a life-support system.
The date of take-off for Shenzhou V is being kept secret. Officials have said only that it would take place by the end of the year. The National Space Administration refused requests for interviews.
The Web site of Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV quoted unnamed experts as saying it would happen between October 10 and 17 and carry two men. Weather is a factor in determining the date.
The spacecraft, along with the Long March 2F rocket that will launch it, were moved several months ago to the well-guarded Jiuquan Space Launch Center in Gansu province in northwestern China.
Fourteen fighter pilots, all male, have been training in secret to be China's first astronauts. Two of them trained in Russia in 1997. Their names have also been kept secret, but the 21st Century News said three have been selected as candidates for the first flight.
Although China may be a bit late, its first flight may exceed the American and Soviet ones in several ways. When cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in 1961, he orbited once, returning to earth in less than two hours. Alan Shepherd, the first American in space less than a month later, made a suborbital flight that lasted just 15 minutes.
Phillip Clark, a British expert on China's space program, expects China's first manned mission to stay in space for nearly 24 hours, orbiting the earth about 14 times. The craft is expected to return to earth to a grassland site in Inner Mongolian.
Chances of success are good, Clark said.
"It's reasonably certain they will be successful with a single-person crew or multi-person crew," said Vick. "They're getting their feet wet and it's getting real now."
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