In the Chinese aerospace community there is a story, more of a legend, which claims that the Americans once offered a moon rock for one of the famous Qin emperor’s terra-cotta soldiers. The Chinese refused. They were sure that getting to the moon was nothing more than a matter of time.[1]
When, during the 1978 negotiations over the normalization of diplomatic
relations, U.S. National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave a 1-gram
moon rock to Chairman Hua Guofeng as a gesture of goodwill, the Chinese passed
it to scientists who broke it up and produced dozens of scientific papers
describing their findings.
This story tells us nothing new, really. The Chinese have always been a proud
and curious people, but it is yet to be known what kind of achievements these
two peculiar characteristics put together could signify for China’s next big
adventure: the space exploration.
Qian Goes East
The story of the birth, death and rebirth of the Chinese space program is a
curious one, full of twists, setbacks, turnovers and sudden sprints. It started
when the Fifth Academy of the National Defense Ministry was founded on October
8, 1956, with the involvement of Qian Xuesen, a U.S.-educated engineer recognized
as one of the fathers of the Chinese space program.
Qian was possibly the smartest Chinese on the planet. He studied in the
1930s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the California
Institute of Technology, becoming one of the leading rocket scientists in the
U.S. He also participated in the Manhattan Project, contributing to the
development of the first atomic bomb. But those were challenging times for
Chinese in the U.S., and when the communists took control of China, Qian was
accused of being one of their foreign supporters. Consequently, after being
under house arrest for several years, he was allowed to go back to his country
in 1955. In the following half century, he became one of the driving forces of
the Chinese space program.
The Dragon in a Space Suit
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit in October 1957, Chinese
leader Mao Zedong was very impressed by the achievement and encouraged his
people to build their own man-made satellite. He wanted to put a huge two-ton
satellite into orbit in order to dwarf the Explorer that the U.S. launched
shortly after, or as he called it: “the
chicken egg of the Americans,” even though most of his people were
struggling daily with poverty and famine.
Soon after came the disastrous Great Leap Forward, which slowed the efforts
of the Chinese scientists and reminded the politicians that, after all, China
was still a poor, underdeveloped country. Quickly they understood that the two-ton
satellite was not much more feasible than the Great Leap Forward itself, so
they reduced their aspirations. There is a reason why it is called “rocket
science,” and they realized that building a satellite was not possible without
a rocket to carry it up.
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| Dong Fang Hong I was launched into orbit on April 24, 1970 |
Following the pragmatic approach suggested by Deng Xiaoping in January
1959, the scientists started to develop a more modest liquid-fueled rocket from
scratch. Not as ambitious as launching a two-ton satellite into orbit, but at least
this project was a realistic step in the right direction. After some years they
successfully developed China’s first indigenously designed liquid-fueled rocket
and launched it on February 19, 1960. The rocket reached an altitude of only 8
kilometers, but this is considered the first landmark on China’s difficult road
to putting a satellite in space. After ten years, on April 24, 1970 Dong Fang
Hong I (The East is Red I) was launched into orbit as China became the fifth
nation to achieve spaceflight capabilities.
The Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and the 1970s slowed down the space
effort. Many scientists involved in the program were accused of being in league
with the West, and many were seized, questioned, tortured, and eventually sent
to work in the countryside. The Chinese space program suffered greatly in those
years. However, after Mao Zedong died and the Gang of Four was arrested, the
Cultural Revolution officially ended, and the progressive communist Deng
Xiaoping became the facto leader of the country. He was a supporter of the
Chinese space program and decided that it was the right time for China to have
its own communications satellite. However, to build one from scratch would have
required too much time and effort. He therefore suggested to simply purchase
one from the Americans. Negotiations with the westerners started but ended up
without any results.
As had happened in the past with their first space endeavor, in the end Chinese
scientists had to build their own communications satellite without help,
starting from the very bottom. After many attempts and setbacks, China overcame
once again the odds and finally placed its first communications satellite into
geosynchronous orbit in April 1984.
It is useful to remember that China’s space effort (particularly its manned
space program) was languishing during this period because of political and
economic events. There was, however, a latent will to go forward. U.S.
President Ronald Reagan’s famous speech on March 23, 1983 announcing the
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), commonly known as “Star Wars,” reportedly gave
new propulsion to the Chinese space program. Reagan’s speech started a new
debate in the country over the role of science, research, and technology. This
discussion eventually led to the rebuilding of the human spaceflight program. Again
the Chinese considered at first to purchase the technology they needed, this
time from the Russians, but the two countries could not reach an agreement.
Once more China basically had to start from scratch and build an indigenous
program. With hard work, money, and resources generously poured into the
effort, in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s they launched four
unmanned spaceships (Shenzhou I to Shenzhou IV), building up slowly but
consistently their own manned spacecraft program.
 |
| Yang Liwei, the first Chinese sent into space |
Finally, on October 15, 2003, Lt. Col. Yang Liwei became the first Chinese
sent into space, and his country became the third sovereign nation to launch
humans into outer space, accomplishing what the Soviet Union and the U.S had
achieved more than 40 years before.
Two years later, on October 12, 2005, the Shenzhou VI manned aircraft
continued the Chinese space program this time sending two taikonauts into
space. The third manned mission was in September 2008, when Zhai Zhigang
performed the first Chinese spacewalk. Three years later China launched the box
car-sized Tiangong I module into space to lay the foundation for a future space
station. Tiangong I was soon followed by unmanned Shenzhou VIII spacecraft. The
space vehicle docked successfully by remote control with the Tiangong I module,
proving that China was able to master this delicate technique. The next mission
in space was completed in summer 2012 by two men and the first Chinese woman.
During this mission the crew carried out China’s first manual docking, a maneuver
already mastered by Russians and Americans in the 1960s. The last effort in
space, the 15-day Shenzhou-10 flight in which the Chinese stayed in orbit the
longer than they had ever done before, ended in June 2013 and demonstrated to
the Chinese people and the world that they were quite ready for the next stage.
The Space Pursuit
When the Chinese started their manned space program in 1992, they created a
30-year long schedule. One is amazed to see how much they stick with it to the
present day. Regardless of what some U.S. Congressmen, the mainstream media and
in general people suspicious of Chinese’s space ambitions think, the
culminating phase of this program has always been very clear: to put a space
station in Earth’s orbit by 2020. Now they are well on the way to doing just
that. But first, they knew they needed to master space flight and prove they
were able to get someone in orbit and safely land him back home. They also
needed to demonstrate advanced spaceflight capabilities (docking, maneuvering, orbital
construction, communication, long-term life-support, etc.). The launch of
manned missions Shenzhou V to Shenzhou X proved that they were capable to do
all of those things. In the last ten years Chinese were able to put a man into
space, perform their first space walk and successfully grasp space rendezvous
and docking technologies. If you are not familiar with the history of manned
space exploration, this could sound like a big deal. In a sense it is, but the twisted
meanings of these accomplishments than one can read in a huge number of web
pages, blogs, articles, essays, even books is frankly ridiculous, when is not annoying.
 |
| Losing perspective: a giant leap for the Chinese Space Program |
Whether these sources completely ignore the last 50 years of space
exploration history or simply don’t know it, their content is full of ideas
such as: “Chinese space dominance”,[2]
“China’s space ambitions”[3] and of
course the ubiquitous “space race with
the U.S.”[4]
According to some of these works, China could very well be on the way to
building its permanent moon settlement and start mining Helium-3[5] or sending
men to Mars.[6] And why not? There are also rumors that they have been building
their own Enterprise to fight the Klingons for control of the Alpha Quadrant.
The less pompous truth is that in space technology terms they have just
discovered the wheel. And they are not yet sure how to use it. Jeffrey Kluger,
a senior writer at TIME magazine, reminds us that someone else has been doing
the same stuff Chinese did (and more) for the last forty years:
“But what
about those Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs? China’s been in the
manned space game for nine years now and has managed four successful launches.
The U.S. flew six Mercury missions from 1961 to 1963; ten Geminis in the 20
months from March 1965 to November 1966; and eleven Apollos from 1968 to
1972. In the nine months from Oct. 1968 to July 1969 alone, we popped off the
first five Apollos—including three visits to the moon and the first landing.”[7]
Despite numerous westerns press accounts suggesting otherwise, the (modest) space station has remained the Chinese spaceflight program’s ultimate goal. This bears repeating: their declared objective is not going to the moon, not landing on Mars, not to create a Death Star, just building their own space station. This is no space race. At best, it is a space pursuit.
So, why are there Chinese in space? If they are not yet ready to terraform
Mars or threaten U.S. national security with their starships, why are they mimicking
space tasks already accomplished half a century ago by Americans and Soviets? There
are several answers to this question but none of them involve quantum
torpedoes. Gregory Kulacki, a senior analyst on China’s defense and arms
control policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, explains it all talking
to Link Asia:
“Well,
space technology is important in almost everything we do in modern society, to
communication, transportation, navigation as well as to Earth’s observation,
disaster management and military and security issues. So the Chinese made the
decision early in the 1980s when they decided to modernize their economy and
society that they were going to make a major investment in space technology.”[8]
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| The space station has remained China's ultimate goal |
International prestige, national pride and of course geopolitical influence
are other parts of the answer. One could also simply ask the Chinese what’s
their end game in space, particularly when it comes to their manned space
program. According to China National Space Administration (CNSA) China’s space
program can be sum up in three phases. Phase one is the launch of a manned
space vehicle in space. The Chinese accomplished this first stage with the
Shenzhou V and VI missions. Phase two is part of a more complicate and longer
process that will eventually grant the Chinese their own completely functional space
station. It started in 2011 with the launch of Tiangong I, the space laboratory
that has been used as a test for future Tiangong modules (Tiangong II and III) that
will constitute the backbone of the definitive Chinese space station. The
docking of both an unmanned and a manned space vehicle to Tiangong I mark the
final part of phase two which has been successfully carried out with the Shenzhou
VIII and XI missions. This stage officially ended with the Shenzhou X mission
in June 2013, China's longest manned space mission to date.
At the end of phase two the Chinese mastered rendezvous and docking
capabilities, which were pivotal to completing and maintaining a larger space
station complex. During phase three, Tiangong I is expected to be substituted
with the larger Tiangong II and Tiangong III modules. Their tasks will be to
perform space experiments, develop space medicines, introduce new technologies
and produce new vegetables and new materials in space.
So, if you ask the Chinese, their main concern in space in the near future
might disappoint many storytellers out there: growing crystals at zero gravity hardly
threaten the supremacy of the U.S. in space and it does not make that bold,
strong title that captures anybody’s attention. Of course one might doubt CNSA’s
version when it comes to discussing China’s space aims. After all, if I ask the
CEO of a big oil company why is that they are pumping up tens of thousands of
barrels per day, the answer will hardly be: “because we want to make money out
of it”. It is because they want to create jobs and opportunities across the
country, because they are helping fuel its growth, giving a future to their employees.
The profit aspect does not suit ads very well. In fact, it could very well be a
collateral damage.
So how do we know what China really wants to achieve with its space
program? They want to build their space station, fine, but what about the bigger
picture? What will they do when their space station is complete? The general answer
is of course that we don’t know for sure. The only thing we can do is try to
guess. However, there is also another aspect rarely considered but nonetheless
fascinating. Maybe the Chinese themselves don’t know what happens next.
Sleepy Eagle, Eager Dragon
Even though China is at list forty years behind the U.S. in space
technology, to catch up is not impossible, especially considering the
particular political and economic circumstances America is facing nowadays. One
could read essays and books about the stripped NASA budget, the growing concern
of the public over the expensive amusement for the satisfaction of some
engineers and scientists, the lack of the culture of innovation, the absence of
ambition, the need of vision and the loss of ingenuity.
 |
| America's Space Program: surrendering the final frontier |
Just look at the way the Americans are going to space nowadays. Well, more
like the way they are carried to
space. With the Space Shuttle program ended, Russians provide Americans the
“taxi service” they need using the Soyuz spacecraft, charging a modest $63
million per seat. The stagnation of America’s space program is no longer news
and you don’t need to see beyond the end of your nose to notice it. In fact, you
just need twenty minutes of your time to have it eloquently explained by the
space exploration advocate and astrophysicist Neil Degrass Tyson. Speaking on
March 7, 2012 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and
Transportation, the scientist said:
“When I
think of our golden era of space exploration, the late 1950s right on up
through the early 1970s, over that time very few weeks would go by before there
would be an article in a newspaper, in a magazine, where cover story would
extol the city of tomorrow, transportation of tomorrow, the home of tomorrow. […]
As the Seventies drew to a close we stopped advancing the space frontier, the
tomorrow articles faded. We spent the next several decades coasting on the
innovations conceived by earlier dreamers. They knew that seemingly impossible
things were possible and others among them, those who saw what the previous
generation had enabled, witness the Apollo voyages to the moon, even if though
they were not the participant. This is the greatest adventure that ever was. Yet
if all you do is coast, eventually you slow down while others catch-up and pass
you by.”[9]
I mistrust anyone who says that the Chinese are catching up to NASA’s
achievements quickly and easily, but don’t get me wrong; if things remain as today,
the overtaking will eventually occur.
No question about that. Someone is describing this particular long-term competition
as “the tortoise and hare race to space”
in which “a low-budget, steady program
overtakes its flitting, fickle, but better-established, rival.”[10] This idea
makes sense. It recognizes the many disadvantages of the Chinese space program
and keeps in mind the achievements of the American counterpart, but at the same
time it also considers the slowly but steady evolution of the former and the
stagnation and lack of leadership of the latter. America’s shoestring budget is
not the only reason why this is happening and the fact that the Chinese are
pouring notable amounts of money in the space pursuit alone doesn’t explain
really anything. One has to look at the context in which all of this is
happening.
Think about it. Before Gagarin made his legendary trip people didn’t really
know what was going to happen. They didn’t know what to expect. As Jeffrey
Kluger pointed out in his article, China’s Space Launch: ‘Wow’ or ‘Meh’: “It’s a familiar joke that before Yuri
Gagarin became the first human being in space in 1961, people didn’t know
whether or not a human being’s eyeballs would explode in zero-g. But the fact
is, people didn’t know whether or not a human being’s eyeballs would explode in
zero-g. The spacecraft, the spacesuits, the ability to rendezvous, dock, walk
in space, reenter safely—every bit of it was new.”
Now it’s not. And what about rendezvous and docking technology, the very
basis for any country willing to even start thinking about building a space
station? According to John Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Planetary Science at
the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, hugely complicated
procedures have never been done before the Gemini and the Soyuz program. As he
explained in an interview broadcasted at CCTV 9: “Now there is a long history of rendezvous and docking. China knows in
general that it can be done and has hardware that is capable of doing this. The
demonstration of that hardware can be done in one or two flights. It doesn’t
require the Gemini program which took twelve flights to invent, and prove and
develop and test rendezvous and docking procedures.”[11]
 | |
| The outcome of the "space race" will depend on both runners |
To put it simply, China is profiting from decades of accomplishments by
other countries, including microchips, satellite relays, space-age materials, onboard
electronics and computing power, to name a few. In other words, China is
pursuing 1960s achievements with a 21st century technology. Considering
this, the Chinese space pursuit might become much more interesting in the near future
for the three following reasons. First, because they take their cues from
countries considered leaders in the space exploration sector, and learn a great
deal from them. Second, they benefit from the successes and the failures of
those nations, and take example from them in order to choose a particular line
of action or avoid any major misstep. Finally, they have a clear plan for the
near future and know what to do and how to do it. Their progresses are slow,
true, but as Professor John Lewis emphasizes: “there is a much lower level of risk associated with a program that is
done carefully and deliberately.” This is a good strategy to avoid any
major setback that could jeopardize China’s entire space program.
Whether or not there will be this anticipated overtake, one thing is clear:
it will depend on both China and
America, but I daresay it will depend more on the latter, on what this country
will or will not do as well as on the many implications of its choices.
There is something striking in the observation made by political
philosopher John Gray who, writing few years ago about America’s financial
problems and its fading global leadership in the London paper The Observer,
noted: “In a change as far-reaching in
its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government
and the economy has collapsed. […] How symbolic that Chinese astronauts take a
spacewalk while the US Treasury Secretary is on his knees.”
Will China Return the Favor?
 |
| Science fiction? |
I know I’m asking quite a bit now, but try to imagine being in the future,
let’s say 40 years from now, sitting on your sofa and looking at the 2050s
version of your TV announcing: “The
Chinese minister of Outer Space Affairs is expected to visit Washington D.C.
tomorrow. He will be giving a 1-gram Mars rock to the President, as a gesture
of goodwill during the negotiations over the normalization of diplomatic
relations. The fragment is part of a three pounds rock that the taikonaut Wei
Xiaoping has brought back from the Red planet two years ago, when his team
successfully landed on the surface of the planet becoming the first ever group
of humans to set foot on Mars.”
As a science fiction and fantasy writer, I admit it; I frequently indulge myself,
creating unlikely, exotic ideas that later I convert into stories or books for
my own amusement, and for the pleasure of anybody willing to read them.
But, believe it or not, for many people this is no fiction, it is
tomorrow’s news. I’m not talking about delusional “easterners”, Chinese
nationalist or wit-lacking people. I’m talking about NASA’s scientists and
engineers, people that have been working on space exploration all their life. I’m
talking about members of the U.S. Congress like Rep. Ted Poe, Rep. Rob Bishop
and Rep. John Carter just to name a few, all of them gathering to “raise an issue that is of real concern”
for the American people and talking about “the
Chinese lunar program”, “China’s
space station” and “Chinese
miraculous turnaround.”[12]
The Chinese space program has landed in the U.S. Congress. The per se reliability
of the information given on that occasion does not concern the point I want to
make. It is the context that is of some interest here. Fifteen years ago a
discussion on Chinese space hegemony might have been addressed in a comic show.
Now it resonates in the U.S. Congress. Does this really mean anything for the
American space program? Is it a signal that things are changing? Not really. When
they were speaking, the Congressmen had no public. The chamber was empty. This
says quite a bit about America’s willingness when it comes to space endeavor: they
are concerned, but at the same time they don’t really care. The hare has
stopped and the tortoise keeps moving forward.
So what about that Mars rock now?
Could something like that really happen? Let’s see all of this from a more
realistic perspective. What will happen when the International Space Station
will be decommissioned in the near future and the only functioning space
station will display a red field charged with five golden stars? What will be
America’s reaction then? Someone says that we might see that very reaction
sooner rather than later. Again, we have to carefully consider not the Chinese,
but the U.S. Congress itself.
On NPR’s Science Friday, Ira Flatow raised a very interesting point regarding
this issue. He asked: “How is this going
to sit with - let's say you look at Congress 10 years now. If the Chinese have
a space station, the U.S. no longer is orbiting in the space station, it's not
invited to go to a Chinese space station, let's say, or is not allowed to have
anything to do with the Chinese space program, are we going to see, do you
suspect, some reversal in Congress saying where the heck are we, why were we
left out of these things?”[13]
 |
| The Chinese Space Program grows ambitious |
Fair enough, and by that time there might be more than a bunch of
Republican Congressmen facing an empty chamber. Or not? It is Professor Joan
Johnson-Freese that provides an interesting answer to Ira’s concerns: “I
think you're exactly right. I think there will be a loud cry of how did this
happen. […] it's very difficult to do manned spaceflight in a democracy because
while we all like spaceflight, we like watching it, when it comes to funding
from government funds, it simply doesn't get the priority that things like jobs
and roads and education and defense gets. In China, they have an authoritarian
government that can keep funding it to whatever level they choose, as long as
they choose to do it, and they will do that as long as they get successful
results from it.”
How interesting and how sad this is. America’s ingenuity, the propellant of
its space achievements, is the very
outcome of America’s democracy. How can it possibly be that today the biggest
authoritarian State on the planet is suitable for space exploration and the
most powerful democracy is not? At least this time the answer seems clear. In
democracy you choose, and as the bold generation of Americans under President
J.F. Kennedy chose “to go to the Moon”, today’s America is
choosing to stay at home.
Investing in Ingenuity
There is some sand on the white-pearl shining wing of SpaceShipTwo. An
engineer spots it and quickly cleans the wing with a special napkin. The
suborbital, air-launched spaceplane designed for the first generation of space
tourists is ready to transport its six passengers in space any moment now. The spaceplane
will be carried to its launch altitude by a jet-powered mothership before being
released to fly on into the upper atmosphere, powered by a rocket motor. There,
its passengers will feel what it is like zero gravity for 4 to 5 minutes while they
glimpse Earth from an altitude of 109 km. The spaceplane will then glide back
to our planet and perform a conventional runway landing. This is not science
fiction.
 |
| A flight ticket for the stars |
Virgin Galactic is just one of the most famous outcomes of private space
flights enterprise or, more simply, privately founded space companies that have
popped up in recent years. But it’s not only about tourism. Planetary
Resources, Inc. is an American company formed in November 2010. Its stated goal
is to "expand Earth's
natural resource base" by developing and deploying the technologies
for asteroid mining. The space transport company SpaceX made history on May
2012 as the world's first privately held company to send a cargo payload to the
International Space Station. These latest new entries in the space panorama are variables that haven’t yet been fully grasped by public opinion. While the
“space race” between America and China has received extensive media coverage
for many years now, privately founded space companies have been treated so far like
an amusement, a strange curiosity of modern times: expensive, premature, unreliable,
dream-fueled; an impossible extravagance. It reminds me of something.
While this new reality in development is still at an early stage, it nevertheless
shows us something very important: competition in space is good; we have the
cold war to prove that. For the foreseeable future, national space programs
like NASA and CNSA will maintain the lead in investment in this sector. However,
if the outer space starts to be seen as a place where investing money to make
money, things could change quickly. Keeping that in mind, within the next few
years, almost six hundred paid-up customers will have taken their space trip on
board private companies like Virgin Galactic.
As I try to discern the science fiction from the reality, a bewildering
thought grasps me. Maybe America’s ingenuity has not been lost after all; it
has just been handed over.
Mix
The author would like to thank Alessandro
Tamagnini, Michael Langone and Debbie Carroll for their helpful comments on an
earlier draft.
* * *
[1] For further information on this episode, please see Gregory Kulacki and
Jeffrey G. Lewis, A place for One’s Mat:
China’s Space Program 1956-2003, American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
2009, p. 19.
[2] Brendan O'Reilly, China floats
towards space dominance, Asia Times Online, June 19, 2012, available at http://atimes.com/atimes/China/NF19Ad01.html
[3] Peter Foster, Should we fear the
threat of Chinese 'space dominance'?, The Telegraph, August 24, 2011,
available at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100101952/should-we-fear-threat-of-chinese-space-dominance/
[4] An example is provided here: http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Space-Race-Exploration/dp/144190879X
[5] China Launches Second Moon
Mission: Is Mining Rare Helium 3 an Ultimate Goal?, The Daily Galaxy,
October 03, 2010, available at http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/10/china-launches-second-moon-mission-is-mining-helium-3-an-ultimate-goal.html
[6] Morris Jones, China Goes To Mars,
Space Daily, October 31, 2010, available at http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/China_Goes_To_Mars_999.html
[7] Jeffrey Kluger, China’s Space
Launch: ‘Wow’ or ‘Meh’?, TIME NewsFeed, June 16, 2012, available at http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/06/16/chinas-space-launch-wow-or-meh/
[8] For the complete interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3EwNV3U6wQ
[9] For the complete speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmKlA_UnX8c
[10] Nicholas Gerbis, Is China
winning the new space race?, How Stuff Works?, available at http://science.howstuffworks.com/china-winning-new-space-race2.htm
[11] For the complete interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuVGgGwVUPw
[12] For the complete speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVaTMXA8Wq4
[13] For the complete discussion http://www.npr.org/2012/06/22/155582842/will-china-blast-past-america-in-space
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