Yes, China continues to be a hot space policy topic. A few items of note:
- Bloomberg News has an article summarizing the perceived threat China’s space program poses to the US. The usual suspects on both sides of the issue are quoted. There are no real new insights here, but it does offer a review of the various claims on this topic.
- The Washington Times had an editorial in yesterday’s edition that sees China as an obvious competitor to the US in space supremacy “if not now, then in the near future.” That, the editorial believes, should keep the US focused on its own space exploration efforts. “If China wants to plant its flag on the moon, then the United States should plant its on Mars,” the editorial concludes.
- A reader pointed out the WSI/China Program/China-US Dialogue on Space, a project of the World Security Institute. The web site includes an extended report on “China’s Space Ambitions”, with contributions from US and Chinese authors. [Note that, as of very early Thursday morning, the web site was not functioning properly; hopefully it will be by the time you read this.]
The Bloomberg article starts off in a misleading manner, mentioning the last time the US had men walking on the Moon and then implying that this is what China intends to do. But the body of the article does not support that, and in fact there is no evidence at all that China has plans for landing a man on the Moon. As the article notes, China’s plans are for robotic probes.
The Washington Times editorial is pretty sloppy as well, stating that “Mr. Luo’s frankness was an obvious announcement that China hopes to compete with the United States in the realm of space superiority, if not now, then in the near future.” Except that Luo said precisely the opposite at the talk that they refer to–that China is not capable of competing with the United States in this respect and that China actually wants to _cooperate_ with the United States in space. If they want to justify their statement, then the Times needs better evidence.
Yes given the lack of evidence the current flurry of articles inflating the rise of China as a space power is now feeding on itself. It’s certainly not feeding on any hard information from CNSA (which makes the old Soviet RSA appear informative by comparison). Everything said and done by CNSA indicates a political, prestige oriented military based program, and as such it is not conducive to international cooperation.
“It’s certainly not feeding on any hard information from CNSA (which makes the old Soviet RSA appear informative by comparison).”
Incorrect. CNSA actually releases considerably more information than the Soviets ever did, as longtime Soviet watcher Jim Oberg has stated. Go see Luo Ge’s briefing charts listing many of their future plans. They are far more open than the Soviets were. For instance, it was not until 1967–ten years after Sputnik and six years after Gagarin–that the Soviets revealed what their R-7 rocket looked like. In contrast, we had images of the Shenzhou and its rocket before it even launched.
“Everything said and done by CNSA indicates a political, prestige oriented military based program, and as such it is not conducive to international cooperation.”
Incorrect again. Look at their briefing charts, as well as official statements over the past several years. They indicate a broad-based program with far more emphasis on science than one would normally expect. Their military space program is actually smaller than one would expect, with a limited number of launches. I expect that to increase at some point in the future, but I also expected their human spaceflight program to increase as well. Chinese officials have said privately that they would like to cooperate with the US in space for about four years now. The only real change is that they now say that openly.
There is clearly a cognitive disconnect here in the U.S. in several ways with regards to China.
It is also happening in the military. The Wall Street Journal (not know for leftist bias) had a Page 1 article yesterday (4/20) titled “As China Boosts Defense Budget, U.S. Military Hedges Its Bets”
The journal reports that Rumsfeld & company want to market China as a near-term threat, to justify new big spending, such as a new long-range supersonic stealthy bomber. Meanwhile, Admiral William Fallon, head of the U.S. Pacific Command is down-playing China’s threat in the near-term, saying “Technologically, we are far and away more sophisticated than they are.”
We have to be understand the institutional bias in spinning what is actually going on.
– Al
Day wrote: “Go see Luo Ge’s briefing charts listing many of their future plans”
Where?
OK found it here: http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/060403_china_space.pdf – yes that is a lot more information, probably more than CNSA has ever released before – this seems all part of Hu’s visit to the US, eg politics. The real measure of a program is money, and that is not mentioned. Given the cost of manned programs, most of the resources are surely going there and the science is token.
“yes that is a lot more information, probably more than CNSA has ever released before.”
In PowerPoint form, yes. However, as Chen Lan has made clear, there is a significant amount of information on China’s space program available on Chinese websites. He has collected a lot of it. Their lunar plans, for instance, have been discussed in numerous places. I’ve seen tentative sketches of their lunar rover, for instance. And a symposium on the Chinese space program in Washington, DC last fall made clear that there is far more information available in open sources in China than people in the US are aware of. I found this out myself last year when somebody gave me a copy of a television special on Yang Liwei’s flight aboard Shenzhou 5. It had extensive footage of astronaut training and launch preparation.
“- this seems all part of Hu’s visit to the US, eg politics.”
First, EVERYTHING is politics. Second, many of the things discussed in that briefing have been presented individually before. This was the first collective discussion of them that I’m aware of. However, several things are worth noting:
-Luo Ge was not very expansive about China’s near-term human spaceflight plans. He briefly mentioned Shenzhou 7 and then the goal of developing a space station by the next decade. He did not discuss Shenzhou 8, 9, 10, etc.
-He also mentioned nothing of their military space plans, although he is not a military official. For that subject, one is largely left to looking at past actions, and China has launched very few military satellites per year.
-Luo did not discuss their organizational structure in much detail. One might ask, for instance, how come China reportedly has 200,000 people in their space program doing _less_ than NASA does with less than 40% of that number.
-Luo’s presentation contained signficantly more information than the Chinese were willing to reveal in 2002 at the World Space Congress in Houston.
-It is worth noting that during the 1990s, the Chinese regularly distributed literature about their Long March rockets at US space conferences, because they were trying to sell launches.
To summarize: They are open when it suits their purposes, and they have obviously decided that openess suits their purposes now, for whatever reasons.
“The real measure of a program is money, and that is not mentioned.”
Not in the documents, but Luo was asked about this during his appearance. I suggest reading this:
http://thespacereview.com/article/599/1
Luo stated that China’s space budget was the equivalent of $500 million. However, that’s a pretty meaningless figure. They clearly spend a larger amount than that, but it is probably hidden in various other budgets.
“Given the cost of manned programs, most of the resources are surely going there and the science is token.”
Arguable. It is probable that a _significant amount_ is going to the manned program, but not “most.” Simply count launches, rockets, and other indicators. I believe that Luo stated that China had spent something like $1 billion on meteorology satellites in the past five years, which works out to $200 million per year out of that $500 million. I don’t really trust any of these figures, but Luo has at least stated publicly that a significant portion of their civil space budget goes to meteorology.
cyclops: Given the cost of manned programs, most of the resources are surely going there and the science is token.
While no one really knows, this is not necessarily the case. As I have discussed before in another context, we in the West tend to inflate the relative cost of human spaceflight and deflate the cost of automated missions. We do this because of our own “high-tech-everything-to-death” cultural bias (resulting in fiascos like SBIRS among others). Other cultures have different biases. In both China and Russia, human beings are relatively cheap (in every sense of the word) and they are much more willing to trade risk for simplicity — ironically, this often results in less real risk, e.g., Space Shuttle versus Soyuz. That could well make the costs of their human efforts much lower relative to automated efforts than is the case in our country.
Mr. Day: but I also expected their human spaceflight program to increase as well.
This at least appears different from what you’ve implied in the past. What if anything has changed in your thinking? Thanks!
— Donald
Mr. Donaldson wrote:
“In both China and Russia, human beings are relatively cheap (in every sense of the word) and they are much more willing to trade risk for simplicity — ironically, this often results in less real risk, e.g., Space Shuttle versus Soyuz. That could well make the costs of their human efforts much lower relative to automated efforts than is the case in our country.”
Actually, I don’t think this can be said for the Chinese space program. Although the Chinese government in general does not put much value on the life of its citizens (something that is true for all authoritarian societies), they have a vested interest in not suffering spaceflight fatalities. There is a big difference between allowing a few dozen peasants to die in a coal mine accident (or executing prisoners) and having a national hero die in space. Such an accident would be embarrassing and would detract from the propaganda value of launching people.
I wrote:
“but I also expected their human spaceflight program to increase as well.”
Mr. Donaldson asked:
“This at least appears different from what you’ve implied in the past. What if anything has changed in your thinking?”
No, I don’t think it is different. Remember that they essentially launched one Shenzhou per year for the first four years. By 2003 I fully expected that after they launched Shenzhou 5 they would increase their launch rate. However, they then waited two years to launch Shenzhou 6, and are waiting another two years to launch Shenzhou 7. That was a surprise to me, because at the very least I expected them to maintain a one launch per year schedule. In fact, I think that this slower schedule makes their program barely viable. It means that their launch crews pretty much start over before each launch and it restricts their ability to gain experience. I’ve experienced this myself with a certain complex electronic form that I’m required to fill out at work relatively rarely–when I have to do it again, I’ve forgotten what I need to do.
I think that this slower schedule makes their program barely viable.
Yes. Anyone who thinks that this is a serious program, for any purposes other than symbolism, is fooling themselves.
It means that their launch crews pretty much start over before each launch and it restricts their ability to gain experience. I’ve experienced this myself […]
Those who use the argument ‘we need to get experience doing X’ to justify some program need to realize that experience is a wasting asset. If you’re not going to get the payoff from that experience soon, you lose two ways: the experience decays away, and the present value of what experience remains is decreased due to the time value of money.
Paul, excellent points. Look at the learning curve during Apollo (e.g., by comparing the surface activities of Apollo-11 to those of Apollo-17). When we stopped after only six expeditions, we wrote much of that experience off, and while some of it is probably retained as a fairly distant insitutional memory, we will not know how much was lost until we try to go back.
More regarding my earlier comment about a “viable” space program, China has now announced that SZ7 will launch in September 2008, which is almost three years after the October 2005 SZ6 launch. And correct me if I’m wrong, but this also appears to be _another_ slowdown in their program. After SZ6, we expected a launch in fall 2006, but they postponed it until 2007. This now appears to be a further one-year delay.
Three years is a very long gap between launches. Think of it another way–the gap between launches of China’s manned space missions is slightly greater than the stand-down time of the US space shuttle after the accident.
How do they maintain their proficiency during that downtime? In the US we fight the atrophy through constant training, but even then one wonders about how well it works. And the US is experienced at this. China will have a hard time training for something that it has little experience doing in the first place.
I think that this new date is very puzzling and calls into question what is really going on with their program. Are they having problems with gaining military support for a program that apparently has very limited military utility? I believe that the Chinese manned space program is funded by the Peoples’ Liberation Army, and the PLA leadership may not like that arrangement and may barely tolerate it. Maybe their manned program has suffered budget cutbacks. What else would explain the slowdown in their launch rate from one-per-year to two years to now three years? Something has to explain it.
It reminds me of a joke from a Harry Potter novel: if you were moving any slower you’d be going backwards…
A little more follow-up.
According to an October 2005 article, Shenzhou 7 was scheduled for a 2007 launch:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/051013_shenzhou6_day2.html
That article does not indicate what month in 2007, but these launches usually occur in the fall (apparently because of tracking station requirements). So assume that it was scheduled for October 2007.
Thus, this latest announcement, that they plan the launch for October 2008, appears to be a one-year slip from the previous plan.
So they have gone from launches once per year (SZ 1 thru 5) to once every two years (SZ five to SZ6) and now once every three years. This looks to me like the Chinese are deemphasizing their manned spacecraft program. The interesting question is why. Technical obstacles such as difficulty developing an EVA suit? Funding problems? Bureaucratic squabbles?
It seems to me that China’s most likely motivation is to demonstrate equality in space with Russia and the United States. A secondary motivation is probably to demonstrate to themselves that they can operate in LEO in case they ever decide to go further. If so, they have at least nominally achieved both those goals.
Also, a look at the overall history of their space program shows many such “stops and goes.” There is a clear history of indecision in their space program that long predates the (latest) human efforts (there were others that never made it to flight). They demonstrate some capability, relax for a while, then move forward.
(We may be following much the same model in lunar exploration.)
— Donald