Orlando Sentinel (Florida) October 13, 2003
World Watches As China Plans Launch
Experts Said Success In A Manned Flight Set For This Week May Point To Military Ability
By Gwyneth K. Shaw
WASHINGTON -- Sometime this week -- perhaps as early as Wednesday -- a Chinese fighter pilot will blast off from the Gobi desert, headed for a historic series of orbits around the Earth.
Years of planning and training have gone into the moment, which will add a third player to an arena owned by the United States and Russia for more than 40 years.
The launch, if it's successful, will be an enormous propaganda boost for the communist Chinese government. But experts say the mission is unlikely to ignite the kind of competitive fervor that drove the U.S.-Soviet race to the moon in the 1960s or inject a sense of urgency into an American space program that is struggling to redefine itself.
What's more likely, they say, is that the launch will send small shock waves through the political debate over China, raising questions about the country's military capabilities and whether the United States should welcome it into the international space station partnership.
NEW SPACE RACE UNLIKELY
John Pike, a space-policy expert and director of the think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said American space technology remains far superior to what the Chinese have so far been able to develop, even with the space-shuttle fleet grounded in the wake of the Feb. 1 loss of the shuttle Columbia.
"We may be in a race, but the Chinese have about four decades of catching up to do before they're even in the same lap we're in," Pike said. "We're leading in the Firecracker 500, and the Chinese are out running some demolition derby on a dirt track."
However, ex-U.S. Rep. Robert Walker, a former chairman of the House Science Committee and the leader of a panel that looked at the future of the aerospace industry last year, said that if the Chinese are serious about their long-term agenda -- which includes talk of building a space station and perhaps even sending people to the moon -- the United States cannot ignore them.
"I'm not certain that the impact of them actually orbiting someone in low-Earth orbit will have a huge impact," Walker said. "Clearly, it will be a major accomplishment for the Chinese, and it's certainly significant that they will become the third nation ever to develop that capability. I'm not certain that event in and of itself makes anybody decide we need to make major changes in our space program.
"If, however, they got where their ambitions seem to be carrying them, then I think it will cause us to have some real concerns about the capabilities they're developing."
GETTING DETAILS FROM HINTS
The Chinese program has been shrouded in the secrecy that surrounds most official dealings of the world's most populous nation. In fact, Chinese officials have not said exactly when the launch will occur, although the government's Xinhua news agency reported Friday that it will take place between Wednesday and Friday and will make 14 orbits of Earth.
But there are some basic facts that have emerged about the program, and the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft that will take the astronaut -- called yuhangyuan in Chinese but "taikonaut", after the Chinese word for outer space, in English -- into orbit.
The Shenzhou 5, a heavily modified version of the Soyuz craft the Russians have used successfully for decades, has room for three, but Chinese officials have hinted that only one "taikonaut" will make the initial trip.
It will take off from the Jiuquan launch site, a top-secret facility built 45 years ago in northwestern China's Gobi desert. The Shenzhou, or "divine vessel," spacecraft has three main components: a propulsion module, a descent module where the crew sits for launch and landing, and the orbital module, where the crew works and does experiments.
The 20-story booster rocket that will carry the ship into orbit is dubbed the Long March 2F and is thought to be capable of carrying payloads as heavy as the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets developed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
FEARS OF LAUNCH ABILITY
Joan Johnson-Freese, chairman of the national-security decision-making department at the Naval War College and an expert on the Chinese space program, said the odds of a successful launch are as high as the Chinese can make them. As the program has evolved through four unmanned flights since 1999, she said, the Chinese have tested and re-tested everything.
It's the launch capability, more than the astronaut on board, that may cause the most consternation here in the United States. That's because if the Chinese can launch a person into orbit, they could also send a nuclear-tipped missile a very long way. There are suspicions that the Chinese are using a civilian program to cover up military advances.
"It will certainly help the argument that we need to have missile defense," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. "If the Chinese can launch things into space like this, the American people are certainly going to understand we need missile defense so they can't obliterate one of our cities."
Johnson-Freese said the launch, and anything more ambitious that follows it, inevitably will get a reaction, from policymakers, if not the public.
"The least efficient, least effective way to develop military space technology is through a manned program," she said. "On the one hand, you have people in that camp saying, 'This is nothing; this is what we did 40 years ago.' The second sentence is, 'This is so threatening we need to increase the military space budget.' "
A SPACE STATION PARTNERSHIP
Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org, whose organization also specializes in defense policy, said it is that specter of military strength, rather than the impact on a civilian space program, that fuels talk of a potential partnership with the Chinese.
"We're in this kind of peculiar situation with the Chinese right now that we were in with the Russians a decade ago: that we're too afraid of them to cooperate with them, but we're not scared enough of them to race them," Pike said. "Unavoidably, the question is, what relationship does the Chinese piloted program have with the international space station?"
So far, there is no formal relationship between the Chinese and NASA, although agency chief Sean O'Keefe hinted at the possibility late last year. As the launch approaches, NASA has been fairly quiet on the issue, with O'Keefe saying that he wishes the Chinese well in their endeavor.
During a publicity event for the new Mission: Space ride at Walt Disney World last week, O'Keefe said, "Maybe we can do something . . . in the future."
Pike and Johnson-Freese said any move to bring the Chinese into the space-station partnership, which already includes the United States, Russia and 14 other nations, almost certainly would be controversial. Rohrabacher, who is chairman of the House Science Committee's space and aeronautics subcommittee, said he would vehemently oppose any partnership with China's Communist Party.
Western nations, he said, already have shared too much with the Chinese, enabling them to develop a space program in the first place.
"I think it was a bad idea to give Hitler the Olympics in 1936. We don't need to bestow any more legitimacy into this dictatorship," Rohrabacher said. "They think we're fools, and all it would mean is that they'd be sucking even more technological knowledge out of our system for their own purposes."
POSSIBLE IMPETUS TO IMPROVE
Right now, however, the space spotlight here remains on whether NASA will use the attention garnered by the Columbia accident to push for a more ambitious long-term agenda.
Walker, the aerospace industry observer, said the American space program should regard the Chinese effort not so much as a threat as a source of motivation.
"The real issue we've got to face up to is, the Chinese are able to do this because they've shown a willingness to make the investment to get themselves there," he said. "And if we talk a lot but don't figure out how to do the next investment, then shame on us."
© Copyright 2003, Sentinel Communications Co.
