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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (5255)	7/24/1999 11:26:00 AM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

Space Drive-China prepares to join the space race, 40 years late ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By Susan V. Lawrence in Beijing (Far Eastern Economic Review) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- July 15, 1999 Nearly 40 years after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, and 30 years after American astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, China is racing to claim its own place in space. A manned space launch is likely "no later than early next century," the semiofficial China News Service said in March, quoting Zhuang Fenggan, a state aerospace official. First, though, China must successfully test the space vehicle it would use for such a trip. The first launch could take place in October--timed to coincide with the celebrations marking 50 years of communist rule--according to a May report in the semiofficial Weekly Digest. Why should China want to put a man in space? Manned space programmes are notoriously expensive--various American studies put the price tag for each U.S. Shuttle launch at between $350 million and $1.4 billion. Lower labour costs might reduce the price for China, but it would still be hefty. And the effort, coming so long after the Soviet Union and the United States', is hardly pioneering. Although Chinese experts offer some technological and scientific rationale, most experts have trouble seeing how putting men in space would benefit China's economy. But that may not be the point. Cachet was a factor in the U.S. and Soviet manned flights, as well as in Europe and Japan's now-mothballed programmes, says Joan Johnson-Freese, a political scientist at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Honolulu. The author of several books on space programmes, Johnson-Freese says: "In every case, if not the initial factor, then the eventual factor was prestige . . . It is exactly the same for the Chinese." China is no stranger to such notions. A June 15 column in the official Guangming Daily opined that the nation's space successes have "confirmed China's major-power status." A typical example of how China uses such technology to send strategic signals and command international respect followed Nato's bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade: State media hyped the successful launch of two satellites aboard a single launch vehicle, the new Long March 4B. Because launch-vehicle technology and missile technology are so closely related, strategists in the West read that as a none-too-subtle reminder of China's nuclear weapons capability. The Belgrade bombing, and the release in the U.S. of the Cox report alleging that China stole hi-tech secrets, have "caused China to speed up the process of preparing for an unmanned vehicle launch," says Eric Li, a satellite-industry specialist at Claydon Gescher Associates, a Beijing-based market-access consultancy. The bombing in particular is seen as having caused deep concern in the military. Consequently, says Li, the government is under pressure "to increase the military budget to allow for the speeding up of research projects, including the unmanned space programme." Looking further ahead, the successful launch of a manned flight would affirm China's technical prowess. "How many countries launch people into space?" says Johnson-Freese. "They will join a very elite club." Domestically, it will be a matter for national pride. For manned space flight, two capabilities are key. One is re-entry technology--ground control must be able to bring the space vehicle back to earth. Another is the ability to launch heavy payloads. China has both: Re-entry was mastered 25 years ago. Its Long March 2F rocket can carry a payload of 9.2 tons into low orbit. Manned space flight requires additional expertise. It also needs trained astronauts. In late 1997, China announced that two of its astronauts had graduated with "excellent scores" from Russia's Gagarin Space Preparation Centre. Manned space flight also demands the installation of life-support systems, and a high standard of assured performance from every component. The cost of achieving this is "quantum magnitudes more than you have to spend for an unmanned rating," says Johnson-Freese. China has rarely revealed what, other than prestige, it hopes to gain from the investment. In a 1996 paper posted on the Internet by the China Aerospace Corp.'s Institute for Astronautics Information, space expert Zhang Xinzhai offered some insights. He pointed to potential advances in materials science, to the prospect of being able to do biological experiments in space, to space tourism, and to the eventual possibility of being able to collect rare elements and minerals from the moon. The Internet home page of a retired Chinese space worker shows a Chinese astronaut planting the red Chinese flag on the moon. The time to send Chinese into space, the page argues forcefully, is now. If only for the prestige involved, the government, it seems, may agree.