The only press coverage of Thursday’s hearing of a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee about the NASA budget request was from Florida Today, which devoted the entire article not to the budget itself but the claim by some members of the committee that “the United States and China are in an unacknowledged space race that this country could lose” without adequate funding for the agency.
Ah, here we go again: a race between the US and China. The article includes some of the usual claims, including that China “has set a goal of putting an astronaut on the moon by 2017″, even though there has been no official pronouncement by the Chinese about such plans and all indications are that China’s space program is still proceeding at a slow pace (China, for example, has pushed back its next manned mission, Shenzhou 7, from 2007 to 2008.) There’s also as of yet no overt sign of development of a new heavy-lift launcher that would likely needed for such a mission, nor the development of a new spaceport on Hainan from which the launcher would operate, two things that are difficult to do without being noticed, as Dwayne Day noted last fall.
That didn’t stop the Congressional rhetoric, though. “We have a space race going on right now and the American people are totally unaware of all this,” said Tom DeLay. “We had a 40-year lead in space and we’re giving it up… The U.S. is quibbling over $3 billion to $5 billion. It’s amazing to me.”
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who traveled to China earlier this year, said: “The American people have no idea how massive the China space program is.” Interestingly, another congressman who went to China with Kirk, Tom Feeney (R-FL), said last month that he didn’t expect to see a space race developing between the two countries.
The chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), asked Griffin to produce in the next 30 days an unclassified report about the Chinese space program and its goals; Wolf added that “he would hold a hearing on the subject to coincide with the report’s release.” (Is an examination of the Chinese space program really within the purview of an appropriations subcommittee? This sounds more like a job for the House Science Committee.) NASA can start that research on Monday without leaving DC: the Center for Strategic and International Studies is hosting Luo Ge, China National Space Administration Vice Administrator, and other senior Chinese space officials for a discussion about the Chinese space program at 3 pm at the St. Regis Hotel.
I take your opposition to jingoism implicit in some Congressman’s comments. However I subscribe to the view that any support for NASA is welcome. Its been over 35 years since NASA had strong bi-partisan supports for its goals. If it takes a China Syndrome to solidify funding for NASA’s goals, so be it. In any case, to suppose that China isn’t strongly nationalistic, even jingoistic, doesn’t know China nor its ruling party.
I suspect that a “race to the moon” with China is unlikely, at least in the immediate future. But, that does not mean we are not in a “race.” China is spending all this money it doesn’t have running a human space program to make sure that the West does not have exclusive access to space. The U.S. Air Force, meanwhile, insists on unfettered access itself (before this is misunderstood, that is a goal I fully support) while being able to deny others access, and NASA argues that a part of the reason VSE should have priority over science is to avoid completely abandoning human access to orbit.
Under any meaningful definition of the term, this is a race. It is one that is seen as vital by both sides. It guarantees that neither party _will_ completely abandon human spaceflight — whatever future presidents and premieres would like to do — and as such it plays into the goals of those of use who wish to see a human expansion into the Solar System.
— Donald
NASA is not really set up to produce an unclassified report on China’s space program, especially in only 30 days. The only way that they could do so would be to use open sources, and as we know, all of the open sources indicate that China is _not_ racing the United States to the Moon. In fact, compared to six months ago, China is actually _slowing down_ its space program. So it seems rather bizarre that China keeps scaling back its manned spaceflight program and yet people claim that this means that they are even more dangerous. By this logic, the worse thing of all would be if the Chinese actually stopped.
You cannot reach the Moon by launching only one manned spacecraft every two years. It requires substantial technology development and demonstration missions–rendezvous, propulsion and reentry tests. Add to that the fact that the Chinese have stated that they have no desire to be lured into a race with the Americans and have also stated that they plan on building a space station.
Congress would do better to ask CNA Corp. to present the results of its assessment of the Chinese space program. CNA has Chinese language specialists who have carefully vetted the statements and the literature that the Chinese have produced and find the Chinese space program less threatening and more methodical than it is often portrayed in the west. CNA is under a DoD contract and at the very least will probably produce a proceedings from its symposium last fall (which I attended and summarized on The Space Review).
But this is also a situation where certain members of Congress should heed the old trial attorney’s advice of not asking a question that you do not already know the answer to–what if they hold a hearing about the Chinese space program and NASA tells them that there is no space race with the Chinese? They won’t like that answer.
Mr. Day, I agree with you that China probably is not engaged in an aggressive space race. However, it is worth noting that their human space program, taking advantage of all the decades of experience and technology that others have developed, is far more productive than the early American and Soviet space programs. In two missions, they have demonstrated much that the United States achieved in Mercury, and flown a Gemini-class spacecraft. My understanding is that their next couple of missions are to test much of what the whole Gemini project demonstrated.
They’re not flying as often partly because they can’t afford to, no doubt, but also because they don’t have to.
— Donald
I don’t think a “race” between the USA and China would be in the best interest of either country.
What position would you guys take if I suggested we should invite China to join the ISS programme?
“However, it is worth noting that their human space program, taking advantage of all the decades of experience and technology that others have developed, is far more productive than the early American and Soviet space programs. In two missions, they have demonstrated much that the United States achieved in Mercury, and flown a Gemini-class spacecraft.”
Yes and no. As I wrote in the article that Dr. Foust referenced, China has taken fewer, but longer strides in its flight program. But if you look at their overall program, they have actually moved slower. They started their human spaceflight program in 1992. So it took them 11 years to orbit a human (versus about 3.5 for the United States). Since that point, they have actually _slowed down_ their human spaceflight program.
I’m not terribly convinced that they can continue with fewer, longer strides for much longer, because the complexity of the tasks increases considerably at this point and the strides become much too long to do in a single step. Put it this way: they built a 3-man spacecraft from the start, so stepping from a 1-man mission to a 2-man (Gemini class) mission to a 3-man mission is not really a big step in terms of complexity. If you consider that they started design of that 3-man spacecraft in 1992, then it will have taken them fifteen years to get from program initiation to a 3-man flight, the same accomplishment that the United States did in about ten years (Project Mercury initiation in late 1958 to Apollo 7 in 1968). But after achieving a 3-man flight and a spacewalk, scheduled for Shenzhou 7 in 2007, the next steps become significantly more difficult. Can they construct a space station by Shenzhou 8? Or will they need to get a few more missions under their belt? And the steps needed to get them to the moon are also substantial. They include rendezvous, on-orbit checkout, in-orbit propulsion firing, and ultimately testing of a heatshield at lunar return velocities. Common sense indicates that the Chinese would want to conduct several manned and unmanned test flights before going for the goal of something like a circumlunar flight. Simply put, even though they appear to have taken an approach of longer, fewer strides, they would be dumb to try and step from something like a single in-orbit rendezvous mission to a circumlunar mission.
I also wonder about how much experience they gain/lose with such long gaps between missions. They have a comparatively young space workforce, but if people do not use their skills, they lose them. Is it wise for them to launch only once every two years?
As you may know, I have written perhaps half a dozen articles about US intelligence monitoring of the Soviet manned lunar space program, and I continue to write on this subject. It is clear from declassified US intelligence documents that the CIA had a pretty good sense of Soviet timelines, although less understanding of Soviet technical decisions. Based upon this experience, plus the Apollo experience, plus the relatively open nature of the Chinese manned space program compared to the Soviet program, it should be easier to get a sense of Chinese progress toward a lunar goal.
So far, we don’t see substantial progress toward that goal, nor do we see any indication that they even have that as a goal. Media coverage has been very poor (and I include some recent spacedaily.com analysis articles in the “very poor” list). Careful analysis is the best way to assess Chinese capabilities and intentions.
On this auspicious date, just a few days before the forty-fifth anniversary of the first human in orbit, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first Space Shuttle launch, I’ve come around to believing that we are in a race with China to the moon, among other things.
Heh!
What position would you guys take if I suggested we should invite China to join the ISS programme?
No benefits to the US (other than our astronauts possibly getting a better look at the inside of a Shenzhou, which is unlikely to yield many useful surprises), a huge unearned boost in prestige for the Chinese program, and (based on our experience with the Russians) unlikely to exert a positive influence on the broader policies of the Chinese government.
Mr. Day, I am very aware of your work, especially in Spaceflight. (Shameless plug that Mr. Day would probably never do himself: these histories of mostly military space activities are worth every cent of a subscription.) Recognizing your superior knowledge, I accept your corrections to my time scale and I further accept that your opinion of where China is and isn’t going soon may well be true.
However, I don’t think that changes my views on the “race” we are in. Right now, the race is a political one (as if its ever been anything else) to demonstrate capability is space; to show the world that China is capable of doing what the United States is capable of doing, without necessarily actually doing it. China is doing just fine in that “race” and, as I have argued before, I think the fact that they are doing it is very good news for humanity’s eventual expansion into the Solar System.
As for the future, by demonstrating a capability, you have at least some of that capability. China cannot get to Earth’s moon next week, nor even a Space Station. But, by demonstrating some of the key technological requirements on a relaxed schedule, if for some reason they decide they do want to go to the moon, they’ll be a lot further down that road than if they were starting from a standing start. Finally, if the United States actually does end up returning to the moon, I doubt China and other great (albeit regional) powers will let themselves be left completely on the sidelines. If they are not invited to join, they will do at least something on their own or in combination with each other.
— Donald
Thank you, that is very kind.
This afternoon, along with about 70 other people (including a lot of press), I attended a talk by Mr. Luo Ge, Vice Administrator of the China National Space Agency. He provided several dates for their upcoming space missions:
Manned oribiting space laboratory: 2015
Lunar flyby: 2007
Lunar soft landing (with rover?): 2012
Lunar sample return: 2017
“All unmanned,” he added.
I have to agree with Don on this one, even though Dwayne is technically correct that China is going slower than the media or Congress is reporting.
Fundamentally, this coming Century will almost certainly be a century of tension between the U.S. and China over power and influence over the world. Hopefully, it will become a peaceful competition of (eventually) friendly democracies, but that is too soon to know definitively. What is driving this is pure economics. It is clear, that if economic trends continue, that the GDP of China will pass that of the United States somewhere in the middle of the 21st Century. One recent analysis suggested around 2040. There is no good reason that these trends will not continue. The real question is not “If?”, but “When?”
Every country in the world knows this is happening. It is already shaping the world’s political dynamics.
Meanwhile, the United States has a romantic view of being the “the world’s leader” in culture, politics, ideas, etc. This will be increasingly challenged by even a friendly China. This is part of our heritage, and is ingrained in our self-view.
Therefore, from this political context, I suggest that we are in a space race with China. Intuitively, our political leaders know this. The United States “powers-that-be” will want to demonstrate that the United States is the world’s leader, and do so in part via our space program. Just as we did in Apollo, as a political response to Sputnik. This is what is really driving the congressional interest, and it is not going to go away because of some NASA or classified report on China’s space program.
So don’t get too hung up on whether China will actually land a human on the Moon before the U.S. does in the 21st Century.
This is a race between the tortoise and the hare. Comparing their actual speeds misses the point. The tortoise is making slow and steady progress, but will continue accelerating at a rate that the U.S. can not match. All because of economics.
– Al
“It is clear, that if economic trends continue, that the GDP of China will pass that of the United States somewhere in the middle of the 21st Century. One recent analysis suggested around 2040.”
I distinctly remember that in 1989 there were graphs that showed Japan’s GDP surpassing the United States’ GDP around 2030 (see, for instance, Paul Kennedy’s “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” or “The Japan That Can Say No”). A year later nobody believed them.
Note that then we had people making predictions 40 years into the future that were invalidated a year or two later. These predictions are inevitably based upon dubious assumptions, such as straight line projections of growth. You can make China’s growth surpass the United States if you assume that the current 9% growth rate stays constant for the next several decades. But why would you do that? Japan experienced explosive growth starting in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, but by the early 1990s its growth rate had dropped to 1%. One lesson from history is that developing nations can experience explosive growth rates, but that these growth rates then subside.
The people who made the predictions about Japan out to 2020-2030 did not assume that the Japanese economy would slow down and then stagnate for a decade. So why should anybody believe that predictions made today about something 35 years away have any validity?
Generally, these kinds of doomsayers fall into two camps–those who _want_ it to happen (such as those who do not like American power and believe that it should be checked by a foreign power), and nationalists who want to use this as a threat to spur the US government into spending more money. Fears of Japanese ascendancy were used in the late 1980s to justify an American industrial policy. Fears of India and China are now being used today to justify spending more money on science, engineering, and R&D.
“I suggest that we are in a space race with China. Intuitively, our political leaders know this.”
I work from data, facts, hard evidence, and careful analysis. If somebody tells me that they “know this” then I want to know how they know it. And I want to know if their reasoning withstands careful scrutiny.
Based upon the data, there is no evidence of a space race. By every measure, China is not racing the United States in space. Simply because they have expanded their program does not mean that they are in a “race.” After all, Europe and Japan started with narrow space programs and then expanded them to include planetary exploration and human spaceflight, and yet nobody claimed that they were “racing” when they did so.
And as I note–and nobody seems able to refute this–China has SLOWED DOWN their human spaceflight program.
China’s presence in space is not proof of a “race.” It’s simply a presence.
And we can add this, which does not sound like a country interested in “racing”:
NASA Chief Michael Griffin Invited to China
By LON RAINS
Editor, Space News
posted: 05 April 2006
02:29 pm ET
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Chinese space officials have invited NASA Administrator Michael Griffin to visit their country the fall, possibly as early as September.
During an informal visit to NASA headquarters in Washington, April 3, Luo Ge, vice administrator of the China National Space Administration, met with Michael F. O’Brien, NASA associate administrator for external relations, to discuss a potential trip by Griffin to meet with Chinese space officials and visit their facilities, possibly as early as September.
“I made a joke with Mr. O’Brien that if we need to get married some day, we have to meet; otherwise we cannot get married,” Luo said in an interview here following his morning keynote speech April 5 at the 22nd National Space Symposium. Luo described the visit with O’Brien as “only a drop in” with two purposes:” to see an old friend” and to discuss Griffin visiting China.
“When I return to Beijing I will draft an itinerary for his visit,” Luo said. He added that a visit by Griffin would be an important first step toward future space cooperation between the two countries.
NASA spokesman Dean Acosta confirmed that China had extended an invitation to Griffin for a visit this fall and that the trip is under consideration, reiterating that there are no firm dates yet.
“I distinctly remember that in 1989 there were graphs that showed Japan’s GDP surpassing the United States’ GDP around 2030 (see, for instance, Paul Kennedy’s “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” or “The Japan That Can Say No”). A year later nobody believed them.”
Comparing China and Japan is comparing apples to oranges.
I remember those days too, and I also remember that I did not believe them for a simple FACT (since you want facts). That if the Japanese citizen was able to grow in leaps and bounds in personal productivity, to equal the American worker’s productivity, that they would only be at about 60% of the U.S. GDP. In effect, because the Japanese population is only 60% of the U.S. population, they would have to be well over 50% more productive than the U.S. worker on a per capita basis for Japan’s economy to become larger than the U.S. economy.
I never believed that was going to happen. I could imagine a Japanese worker being marginally more productive, say 10%, but not more than 50%. It never made sense to me. Since you like facts, I did a little research to back it up.
If you look at the advanced industrial nations, on a per capita productivity basis, they generally all fall within a given range on a per capita basis. (There is a lot of debates on economic comparisons among economists, but most of it is trying to wring out errors of 10% or less).
For example, for one comparison look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LabourProdComparison.PNG
You will see that in most years, that the per capita productivity of these countries lie within 10-20% of each other, and have been for some time. The outliers, which are usually corrected in a year or two, generally come from short-term exchange rate fluctuations. Note that the amount of the discrepencies between per capita productivity is actually reducing over time. As you see, the Japanese worker’s per capita productivity is about 10% less than the U.S. worker.
Now for why China is much different than Japan.
FACT: China has approximately 4 times the population of the United States.
FACT: For China’s GDP to equal that of the U.S. GDP, the Chinese worker need only achieve a per capita productivity of 25% of the American worker.
Alternatively, if you look at it from the other side — for the U.S. GDP to remain larger than China’s GDP, the American worker must *remain* at least 300% more productive than the Chinese worker on a per capita basis.
Will the American worker remain 300% more productive than the Chinese worker, over the long-term?
The facts suggest otherwise. When compared to other advanced industrial nations, the American worker is only ~10-20% more productive.
There are always problems in predicting the future. China could screw it up somehow. But China has many examples of successful economic reform, and they appear to have a deliberate well thought out economic plan based on those previous economic success stories (e.g., Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan). Based on the history of economic development among industrialized nations, it appears highly likely that China’s GDP will surpass that of the U.S. in the next few decades. Most of the long-term economic screw ups have to do with either huge educational problems (not a problem for China, where their people highly value education) or a cultural problems (not a problem for China, where they have a very positive attitude about hard work, and a fundamentally entrepreneurial attitude at the individual level.)
Therefore, I stick by my point.
– Al
PS — When confronted with this future, does this create an emotional reaction among the reader? You tell me. Personally, I can only speak for myself (“Yes”). I also admit that it has nothing to do with “reason” or “logic”. I just like the fact that the U.S. is the unassailed world’s leader, and I don’t like the alternative.
This emotional reaction is going to be played upon by a lot of people, including politicians. Politicians are very good at smelling trends, and this is going to be a long-term trend. They are going to play to it.
And we can add this excerpt of a speech by Mike Griffin from today at the National Space Symposium. You tell me whether this sounds like what I was speaking about in the above post, and whether this sounds like a race. (For the full speech, visit .)
“Today, and yet not for much longer, America’s ability to lead a robust program of human and robotic exploration sets us above and apart from all others. It offers the perfect venue for leadership in an alliance of great nations, and provides the perfect opportunity to bind others to us as partners in the pursuit of common dreams. And if we are a nation joined with others in pursuit of such goals, all will be less likely to pursue conflict in other arenas. No enterprise of national scale offers a more visibly attractive and interesting collaboration than does space exploration. This great enterprise threatens no one while enriching everyone. It is about the lure of the frontier; leaders occupy and extend the frontiers of their times. Indeed, it is this property of great nations that by itself and in the light of history, defines the great nations of whatever period.
This observation has a corollary. Imagine if you will a world of some future time – whether it be 2020 or 2040 or whenever – when some other nations or alliances are capable of reaching and exploring the moon, or voyaging to Mars, and the United States cannot and does not. Is it even conceivable that in such a world America would still be regarded as a leader among nations, never mind the leader? And if not, what might be the consequences of such a shift in thought upon the global balance of economic and strategic power? Are we willing to accept those consequences? In the end, these are the considerations at stake when we decide, as Americans, upon the goals we set for, and the resources we allocate to, our civil space program. Humans will go to Moon and Mars; the only questions are which humans, what values they will hold, what languages they will speak.”
– Al