Key questions

There are a number of policy implications of China stepping into the human spaceflight business, explains Joan Johnson-Freese, chair of the National Security Decision Making Department at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

Writing in the Oct. 1 edition of Yale Global Online, a publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Johnson-Freese tackles a number of issues revolving around the upcoming liftoff. The views she expresses in the article are hers alone and do not represent the official position of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Johnson-Freese believes that to understand the implications of the launch, four key questions need to be considered:

• Why are the Chinese pursuing a manned space program?

• How much is it costing them?

• Will the upcoming manned launch be successful?

• What will be the reaction of the American public to a successful Chinese launch?

The answers to these four questions are likely to influence U.S. technology and defense interests, Johnson-Freese believes, as well as policy makers in Washington and around the globe.

A successful launch could bring a multitude of benefits to China, similar to what the Apollo program did for American scientific advancement. But she adds a cautionary note. While "success in the heavens is spectacular so too is failure."

"Some U.S. analysts see China's manned space activity as a Trojan Horse within which they can conceal their military space activities," Johnson-Freese explains. "Others see it as a prestige program for the country, acknowledging that such prestige includes domestic legitimacy for the government, regional leadership, and internationally 'playing with the big boys.'"

Space boosting budgets

China is spending about $2.2 billion annually on space, according to estimates from U.S. analysts. When contrasted to NASA's $15 billion that doesn't seem much.

Johnson-Freese believes that comparing those budget numbers is meaningless.

That's due to China's command economy (where supply and price are regulated), difficulties with currency conversion and the fact that China deliberately over-employs people in state-owned enterprises to keep unemployment down, she explains.

"The best that can be said, based on their commitment to the program, is that China is spending relatively significant government resources," she says. "Interestingly, the same factors that make comparisons impossible may also enable China to maintain the political will to develop space stations, lunar bases, and even missions to Mars -- goals that China has publicly stated it wants to pursue. Ultimately, however, political will can only be sustained by one thing -- success."

Public impact

For some, there is an assumption that behind China's pursuit of manned space capability lies something militarily nefarious, Johnson-Freese explains. This is a conclusion "drawn from analysis of intent, not technology."

"Ironically, Western analyses sometimes dismiss China's technological accomplishments in one breath, and see dire consequences in China's manned space launch for the United States in another," she writes.

An important question, she adds, is the impact on the American public of a successful Chinese manned spaceflight.

"That it will likely occur while the U.S. shuttle fleet is grounded will magnify how the U.S. and the world perceive China's technological achievement. Certainly, some in Washington will react by claiming that the launch requires the U.S. to spend more money on space -- military space," Johnson-Freese suggests.

In policy circles, Johnson-Freese continues, the perceived strategic importance of the Shenzhou flight could also chill recently warmed U.S.-China relations. But will it also trigger a demand to re-invigorate the U.S. human spaceflight program?

"At the moment, although an austere version of the International Space Station is in orbit, it has been a stepchild while military space has ascended in importance. Maybe the launch will generate nothing more than a passing interest from the U.S. public," Johnson-Freese concludes.

One-upmanship

China's initial leap forward in human space exploration is likely to be modest and cautionary, said Dean Cheng, senior policy analyst at the Center for Naval Analysis in Alexandria Virginia.

On this inaugural flight of a piloted Shenzhou, China is not likely to take too many chances, such as radically modifying tried-and-true booster designs.

Cheng said that he's seen one report indicating that the Long March 2F upper stage may have been strengthened to handle the increased weight of a Shenzhou, plus the escape tower.

It wouldn't seem likely Chinese space engineers have made radical booster design changes, "simply because it would almost certainly have gone through a much more extensive testing program," he said.

"The Chinese, for obvious reasons, want their manned program to do well, and that means making sure that there are as few uncertainties as possible. Given that they've not put a man up before, this is probably not the time for them to also start testing new launch systems as well," Cheng told SPACE.com.

On the other hand, Cheng's personal opinion is that the Chinese manned program, like many other Chinese efforts, will aim to "top" other countries' first efforts. The first Chinese satellite was bigger than Sputnik 1, for example, he said.

Cheng suggests that China might aim for a multi-man shot, probably two people. That would be a case of true "one-upmanship" on their part. Both the former Soviet Union and the United States lofted a single person on their first orbital sojourns: Yuri Gagarin in April 1961, followed by John Glenn in February 1962.

NASA astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom each flew a suborbital flight to space in 1961 before Glenn circled the Earth.

Get them up, get them down

Jonathan McDowell, a space analyst at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., notes that the Shenzhou is much closer in capability to the U.S. and former Soviet Union's second-generation spacecraft, Gemini and the Soyuz, respectively.

"Indeed, Shenzhou is closely based on the Soyuz design. In particular, it can carry a crew of at least two, and more importantly, has maneuvering and rendezvous capabilities," McDowell told SPACE.com.

"The key thing to demonstrate on this mission is the life support system. Also, they'll do a lot of testing of onboard systems, as well as some baseline medical experiments to study how the astronauts adapt to free-fall. That's nothing new for us, but they need to get their own experience," McDowell said.

During the Shenzhou 5 flight, McDowell said, the spaceship will likely undergo manual orientation trials, with the crew onboard aligning the craft to a particular star, or getting snapshots of a particular part of China.

"I suspect another objective will be to test out the maneuvering engine and change their orbit slightly, in preparation for future missions which will do rendezvous and docking," McDowell noted.

Finally and crucially, the Shenzhou V crew would activate the recovery system, first jettisoning an orbital module that typically stays in orbit for months, then head home in a descent module by firing the engine to return to the atmosphere and land in northern China, he said.

"Although all of these systems have been tested on the first four automated missions, we can expect a pretty simple mission profile on this first flight with a crew, McDowell said.

"Go up, check that the life support systems work with an actual crew onboard -- air, water, food, temperature, and, yes, waste disposal -- test out a few other basic things like the rocket engine and attitude control, and then get the astronauts back as soon as possible."