Testimony of James Oberg: Senate Science, Technology, and Space Hearing: International Space Exploration Program
Given at a Science, Technology, and Space Hearing: International Space Exploration Program Tuesday, April 27 2004 - 3:30 PM - SR - 253
The Testimony of Mr. James Oberg, Aerospace Operations Consultant, Soaring Hawk Productions, Inc.
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China vis- -vis the United States: Strengths and Weaknesses
A comparison between the Shenzhou spacecraft and its direct descendants, versus the still-undefined and undersigned US Constellation project (nee CTV, CERV, etc.) reveals a pattern of relative strengths and weaknesses of the two nations and their approaches to expanded lunar activity.
Both vehicles can carry 3 or more crew, are launched on expendable boosters, have launch-escape-systems, can rendezvous and dock in orbit, and return on dry land. Both promise to outstrip capabilities of the Russian Soyuz vehicle, just as Russia itself wants to replace it with the Kliper design (the Russians see this project funded by Europe and the US, in their dreams).
The United States spends $30 billion a year on space, the Chinese perhaps $2 billion. But the Chinese have made it clear they will not duplicate across-the-board all of the activities funded by the United States.
A major problem for China is that their top-down and tightly-focused space management strategy is extremely brittle, and vulnerable to unpleasant surprises and unpredicted constraints. This is because space technology often cross-fertilizes, and difficulties in one area find solutions in seemingly unrelated disciplines, in a manner that top level management is usually incapable of foreseeing. Although methodical and incremental approaches to programs such as Shenzhou have been successful, more advanced projects - particularly the CZ-5 booster - will require longer strides and may reveal the shortcomings of narrowly aimed management. That in turn may encourage more aggressive efforts to find the required technologies overseas.
Beyond mere technology acquisition, China has implemented an extremely effective policy of extracting all usable lessons from other countries space experiences. This is the fundamental issue of engineering judgment, the day-to-day decision-making that propels a program to success - or, if not done properly, to frustration and disaster. The Chinese have studied the Soviet, the American, the Japanese and European and other programs intently, with the explicit goal of learning from them. NASA's culture in recent years, on the other hand, has looked overwhelmingly arrogant towards any outside expertise (even, or especially, from other US agencies, and sometimes actually between different NASA centers). Worse, it has shown itself incapable of even remembering fundamental lessons (such as flight safety) that an earlier generation of NASA workers had paid a high price to learn - only to have it forgotten and eventually (hopefully) re-learned.
The demographics of the space teams in both countries also demonstrates a major difference that goes beyond mere financial resources. While space workers are equally happy to be at their jobs, the workforce in the Chinese program reflects the major build-up of the past decade and is predominantly young, and has been involved in major program development activities. NASA, as a mature civil service branch, has had relatively stable - some might even say moribund - staffing for decades. While there has been a steady flow of new hires, they have in large part been involved in maintaining existing programs, without much opportunity to learn by doing . Outside observers such as Dr. Howard McCurdy have voiced serious doubts that the current NASA culture is capable of sustaining an ambitious and expansive new program (late last year he testified how that could be fixed), but there is little doubt that the Chinese space workforce is, because they ve shown it.
The rationale for China investing substantial sums into expanded human space flight - space stations and even lunar sorties - remains unclear, but to a large degree they may be the same motivations that have already funded the Shenzhou program. If Shenzhou continues to be successful, internally popular, and helpful to Chinese economic, diplomatic, and military relations with other nations, then more ambitious projects with similar effects may justify their budgets too.
Weighing these factors, the future of lunar exploration - and China's role in it - is likely to be extremely interesting. While the motivations that fuelled the Space Race of the 1960's are largely absent - primarily the naked fear in the US that a world that accepted Soviet dominance in space would have many other consequences undesirable from a US point of view - there remain solid motives for international rivalry, for serious attempts at illicit technology transfer, and for activities that could diminish the world stature of US aerospace technology.
In metaphorical terms, China is now facing a steep road into the sky. It has shown it has the heart and the brains for this chosen path. Now the world must wait to see if it has the muscle and the stamina - and the wisdom. And the same question applies to the United States.
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