Houston Community News >> Chinese Steps Up Space Race
10/26/2007 BEIJING - Half a
century after the Soviet Union beat the United States into outer space, China
launched its first lunar orbiter this week, catapulting the Asian nation onto
the front lines of a new space race aimed at giving it bragging rights as a
rising world power.
The Chang'e One satellite, named after a mythical beauty who flew to the moon,
lifted off Wednesday under cloudy skies in western China's Sichuan province
aboard a Long March A3 rocket. It will spend a year circling and studying the
lunar surface and laying the groundwork for the ultimate goal of making China
the first Asian nation to put an astronaut on the moon.
The liftoff was broadcast live on state television, witnessed by government
officials and about 2,000 space enthusiasts who paid about $100 each to see it
on-site. This expensive technological spectacle was in contrast to the
evacuation of thousands of poor farmers in nearby villages, who had to
temporarily put away their plows and walk away from their pigs as a safety
precaution in case of a mishap or the animals getting scared.
Like playing host for the Olympics, the lunar mission is a symbolic opportunity
for China to boost national pride in the one-party state.
"These things serve as a cohesive force for the whole nation," said Ivan Choy, a
political scientist at the City University of Hong Kong. "Even if you don't
believe in communism, at least you will try to accept that it is the leadership
of the Communist Party that has made China strong and able to compete with the
other superpowers."
Beijing aspires to put an astronaut on the moon within 10 to 15 years, ahead of
Japan, which launched an unmanned moon orbiter last month, and India, which
hopes to do the same in April.
The Chinese launch of the Chang'e marks the first move in a quest to land a moon
rover, probably in 2012, and another about five years later, to bring back
geological samples.
China says its intentions are peaceful, but its space ambitions startled the
world in 2003 when it became the third nation, after the Soviet Union and the
United States, to send an astronaut into space aboard its own rocket. Astronaut
Yang Liwei's one-day journey around Earth was followed two years later by a
flight of two astronauts who spent five days in space.
Next year's planned mission is expected to carry three Chinese astronauts, known
as taikonauts, who could also attempt the country's first spacewalk.
Astronauts aboard the Apollo 17 were the last Americans on the moon, in 1972.
"I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are," NASA
Administrator Michael D. Griffin reportedly said in a lecture in Washington two
weeks ago, marking the space agency's 50th anniversary, still a year away.
On Wednesday, Griffin congratulated the Chinese and opened the door to future
joint lunar research. "We look forward, as they do, to the new information
Chang'e will provide about our nearest neighbor in space and to cooperation with
us in the future exploration of the moon," he said.
"We welcome China as the newest space-faring nation engaged in the peaceful
exploration of the solar system," said Louis Friedman, executive director of the
Planetary Society.
Christopher Kraft, flight controller for Apollo 11, the first manned mission to
the moon, said that placing a spacecraft in orbit around the moon is a
significant achievement.
"It says they've got the capability of computing the orbital mechanics to get
there" and achieve a stable orbit, he said by phone from Houston.
"But the step between sending an unmanned probe and a manned spacecraft is a big
one. At least an order of magnitude, if not two orders."
It's also tremendously more expensive to keep human beings alive on a journey to
the moon and back. "It remains to be seen if they have the technological
knowledge and stick-to-itiveness" to go the rest of the way, he said. "If and
when they do that, I'll tip my cap to them."
Unlike America, Kraft said, the Chinese graduate huge numbers of engineers every
year. China's space program will provide an insight into how good they are, he
said.
China had its eye on the sky back in the early 16th century, when a Ming dynasty
official named Wan Hu made one of the world's first attempts to reach outer
space. His vehicle was a chair, attached to 47 rockets, and his wings were two
hand-held kites. Needless to say, he didn't make it, but he did leave his name
to posterity in the form of a moon crater named in his honor.
China's Communist Party probably has a chance to make an even deeper impression
in space. When the Chang'e orbits the moon, it will broadcast 30 patriotic
Chinese songs, including "East Is Red" and "Everyone Loves My Home Town."
Since it takes three members to form a branch of the Communist Party, Yang,
China's first taikonaut and a party member, told the New China News Agency last
week that once the country built its own space station, he and his fellow
taikonauts could form the first branch of the party there.
That way they can conduct study sessions of party policies in outer space, he
said, just as they do on Earth.
(Contributed by Baltimore Sun)