Page 1 of 2 Obama doesn't hand China the moon
By Peter J Brown
Critics of the decision by United States President Barack Obama to cancel the
US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Constellation
program, which was conceived five years ago to carry US astronauts back to the
moon, portray the US as moving in the wrong direction and putting the nation at
risk.
For example, John Tkacik, who is a retired Foreign Service officer and former
chief of China analysis in the US State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, recently wrote his assessment of Obama's decision in The Washington
Times. [1]
"China's aerospace industry firms - which for decades have
supplied dangerous missile technologies and equipment to Iran, North Korea and
Pakistan, and which have been sanctioned ceaselessly by four successive US
presidents for their transgressions - will find the [US] in a new suppliant
posture," wrote Tkacik. "The atrophying US space program suggests that America
will be forced to cooperate with China in space, or else cede the high frontier
of space to China altogether."
This represents a major setback for the US space program as a whole, the
argument goes, and will drive the US into the role of a second-tier player when
it comes to manned spaceflight in particular.
Chinese espionage is also eroding the US's leading role in space. The
sentencing on Monday of convicted spy Dongfan Chung to 15 years in prison is
proof positive of China's ongoing space-related espionage activities in the US.
Chung, a former Boeing and Rockwell International employee, was convicted last
year of providing information to China about US rockets and the space shuttle.
The Los Angeles Times reported that, according to the US Attorney's Office, US
district judge Cormac Carney said that China should "stop sending your spies
here". "Giving China advanced rocket technology is not in the United States'
national interest," said Assistant US Attorney Greg Staples. "There is a
voracious appetite for US technology in China." [2]
Whether Chung has contributed to Chinese taikonauts arriving on the moon
sometime between 2017 and 2022 is unknown. But there is a good chance that
China will touch down on the lunar surface well before any US astronauts arrive
back on the moon - that is if China's missions proceed according to plan. (The
last manned US moon mission was in December 1972.)
"I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are,"
former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told an audience in Washington, DC in
September 2007. [3]
"We certainly could be back on the moon faster than the Chinese, but we don't
have the political will and therefore the resources to do it," Dr Joan
Johnson-Freese, head of the US Naval War College's National Security Decision
Making Department, said in 2007. She also declared that while the US is "more
technically advanced" than China, by copying Russian spacecraft designs, China
was making rapid strides.
More than two years later, Johnson-Freese backs her earlier comment.
"I stand by it and believe that the future of the US human space exploration
really became tenuous in 2004 with the announcement [by former US president
George W Bush] of his space 'vision' - including ambitious goals, even more
ambitious timelines, and a grossly insufficient budget and no plan for getting
the required budget," said Johnson-Freese. "That vision, which became the
Constellation program, was doomed from the start and began a spiral which,
without a significant budget increase and an extension of the timelines, turned
out the only way it could have. If congress is now upset with the cancelation,
they can always put the money back."
The sense that the US space program is now heading over a cliff as a result of
Obama's decision is pervasive among critics in this instance. Tkacik reminded
everyone that the decision did not happen in a vacuum. In 2005 alone, for
example, China produced twice as many graduate engineers as the US - 351,537
versus 137,437 - and that at the prestigious University of Virginia, out of the
99 doctorates in engineering awarded from 2007 to 2008, 33 went to Chinese
scholars.
"China's space program also seems to have all the funding and resources it
needs, partially due to the fact that seven of China's nine most senior leaders
- the standing committee of the Chinese Communist Party's politburo - are
themselves engineers," said Tkacik.
Tkacik points to the median age of NASA's manned space engineers, which is now
over 55. "Over a quarter are past retirement age," wrote Tkacik. "Meanwhile,
China's average lunar probe engineer is about 33 years old and the Shenzhou
manned-space program engineers average about 36."
This engineering gap is serious, but it does not appear to be impeding the US,
which has experienced a surge in private sector space ventures. Dr Charles
Lurio, publisher of "The Lurio Report" which covers the new private space
sector, sees reason for optimism.
"The US space program is not atrophying, quite the opposite. The newly proposed
NASA budget and program will create the opportunity for the private sector to
do for space what it did for computers: massively reduce costs and similarly
increase capabilities," said Lurio, who is based in Boston.
Meanwhile, there is no sign of any such activity in China, and certainly not on
the scale that the US is experiencing today.
A $50 million award to five US companies - big and small alike - for commercial
spaceflight is energizing private space sector supporters.
The money flows from the vast stimulus effort that the US government has
activated over the past few months and is part of a planned US$6 billion,
five-year effort to make sustained commercial spaceflight a reality.
New and relatively new small companies will benefit enormously in the process,
like Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp, which alone was awarded $20 million to
continue development of its "Dream Chaser" manned space capsule, and Washington
State-based Blue Origin which was awarded almost $4 million for various
projects, including research on the use of composite materials in space.
Another small company on the list is Arizona-based Paragon Space Development
Corp, which is pursuing various space mission support systems and receiving
$1.4 million to do so.
Boeing, a veteran contractor for NASA, received $18 million to create a
seven-person space capsule and a joint venture involving Boeing and Lockheed
Martin known as the United Launch Alliance will use almost $7 million for
systems in support of future Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rocket flights.
It is important to note that two pioneering US private space sector companies,
California-based Space Exploration Technologies and Virginia-based Orbital
Sciences Corp, are moving ahead rapidly thanks to the $3.5 billion that they
have already been awarded for International Space Station support missions.
Critics view this shift to a private sector approach as inherently unsafe, or
less safe than NASA.
"Is the private sector likely to have failures? Yes. Will lives be lost? Most
regrettably, that may happen at some time or other. But NASA has had tragic
losses for decades, without substantially overcoming fundamental safety issues
- just as they haven't reduced cost," wrote Lurio in his most recent report.
"The private sector would pursue multiple paths to orbit in parallel, respond
more quickly to fix system flaws, and must strive constantly towards making
space flight ever-safer to enable and expand its own new, private markets."
To describe what is happening in the US, Lurio uses language that many Chinese
may find curious.
"The proposed R&D [research and development] work has several sections
which themselves appear geared to both benefit from and encourage 'a thousand
flowers blooming' in the New Space industry," wrote Lurio, who added, "The
fight for changes at NASA has barely begun."
As a huge political storm is brewing, Lurio urges restraint and reason.
"A great caterwaul has already arisen from both sides of the congressional
aisle that the proposed new direction means the 'end' of US human spaceflight -
when it means just the opposite," wrote Lurio.
According to Jeff Foust, publisher of "The Space Review", in the heated debate,
"Many people - on Capitol Hill, in industry and on editorial pages and in the
blogosphere - missed in the discussion (not to mention the hype and hyperbole)
about canceling Constellation and 'giving up the moon' a more fundamental
issue."
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