Florida Today (Brevard County, FL) February 18, 2004
Partnering With China In Moon Quest
By John Kelly
CAPE CANAVERAL -- China's entry into the elite club of spacefaring nations and the United States' sudden expansion of its goals for human spaceflight are raising a new question: Is a new space race in the works?
"That's the $12 million dollar question, the one I've been asking since the president's speech," said Joan Johnson-Freese of the U.S. Naval War College, one of the foremost western experts on the Chinese space program.
While NASA figures out how to get astronauts back to the moon and onto Mars, the United States faces a choice. It can compete with the ambitious Chinese in a 1960s-style space race, or invite them to be a partner in the space station and other exploration projects.
"We are in a real window of opportunity here to make it, instead of a race, a chance at international leadership," Johnson-Freese said. "We could operate inclusively and bring in not just the space station partners, but also countries like China and India, and turn this into leadership."
Neither NASA nor anyone else in the administration is answering specific questions about China's potential involvement. Bush's speech Jan. 14 offered a one-line hint about the need for a world coalition to pursue his vision of returning to the moon as a jumping off point for human expeditions to deep-space destinations, such as Mars or asteroids.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe was vague when asked about including China or India, the two highest-profile spacefaring countries not now included in the 16-nation International Space Station project.
"It poses some interesting questions, and it certainly I think opens up the opportunity," O'Keefe said.
Wide implications
The level of international cooperation in the new moon-Mars effort is among the questions Bush assigned to a presidential commission that is to report to him in four months.
The decision could have potentially far-reaching implications for world politics.
Russia and the Europeans, the two biggest partners in the space station, already are cooperating with the Chinese and are unlikely to object to them joining the $100 billion project.
But some U.S. politicians and military leaders are reluctant to form a partnership that could somehow give China increased access to American technology. Others oppose Chinese involvement because of human rights concerns.
The Chinese repeatedly have expressed interest in contributing their space technology to the International Space Station effort.
'Tinker-toy' approach
The "tinker-toy" connectable nature of the modular space station makes it possible to add partners as long as they adapt their hardware to latch on as needed, said John Pike, an international space policy analyst based in Washington. The Chinese Shenzou is a modified version of the Russian Soyuz that the station was designed to accommodate.
With funds for space limited in this country because of rising health care, retirement and other social costs, help from the Chinese could help defray costs, much like contributions from the Russians, Europeans and others have lowered the cost of the space station.
But if the United States continues to shut them out of cooperative efforts, analysts say the Chinese could be forced into a space race.
China's station plans
But that country has issued repeated manifestos saying the regime has determined mastering space travel -- human and robotic -- is important not just for nationalistic, educational and technological reasons but also for world prestige and military reasons. Outside estimates show the country is spending more than $2 billion a year on space.
China put a man in orbit in October. A second, perhaps two-man flight on Shenzou is planned by 2005.
The country plans a space station similar to Russia's Mir within the next decade or so. Robotic missions to the moon are planned before 2020.
The country also is working to improve its Long March rocket and including military reconnaissance payloads on the supposedly civil Shenzou flights.
All the while, China is lobbying in the United Nations against space-based weapons including the U.S. plan to develop a missile defense system.
The nation continues, according to Chinese government documents and Defense Department analyses, to work toward weapons that could disable U.S. spy and military satellites.
Generally, the Defense Department is pondering the military application of all of China's space advances.
Prestige at issue
"While one of the strongest immediate motivations for this program appears to be political prestige, China's manned space efforts almost certainly will contribute to improved military space systems in the 2010-2020 timeframe," Pentagon experts said in the U.S. military's latest assessment of Chinese military power.
Johnson-Freese and other observers suggest the United States could be better served by gaining some insight into China's space efforts and build a spirit of cooperation much like it did with the Russians over the past few decades -- a relationship that is now very strong partly because of the countries' cooperation on the International Space Station.
"Let's bring them into the space station program so we can continue to get access to their space program, keep an eye on them and demonstrate to them that we're not fixing to blow them up," Pike said.
Johnson-Freese said assigning the Chinese to elements of the space station project could keep them "making cars instead of tanks."
One other impact of the choice could be the cost to U.S. taxpayers. So far, the Bush administration estimates spending more than $100 billion on the program, which sounds like a large figure but will require only modest increases in the NASA budget. The current NASA budget costs the average taxpayer about what it costs for a family of four to go to a movie.
However, the financial assistance will be limited. The U.S. is not likely to rely completely on the Russians, Chinese or others to develop spacecraft or other safety-critical hardware for missions to the moon or Mars.
"The Japanese or the Europeans could have a laboratory module, but if they had flaked out on us and not delivered, you still have a space station," Pike said. "But this is different. You're not going to put any foreigners on projects that are on the citical path, and everything is on the critical path when you're going to the moon."
© Copyright 2004, Florida Today (Brevard County, FL)
