China and U.S. May Team Up on Space Exploration

Sept. 25, 2006 — -- The United States has opened unprecedented conversations with the government of China in order to create cooperation on space exploration.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is in China at the invitation of Laiyan Sun, administrator of the China Space Agency.

Griffin issued this statement on his trip.

"My goal is to become acquainted with my counterparts in China and to understand their goals for space exploration"

The visit may be unprecedented, but it has huge political implications: Can China be trusted in space?

Houston-based analyst Mark Whittington, in an editorial in The Houston Chronicle, says no.

"For the past several years the Chinese are embarked on a huge arms buildup in a bid to make China a superpower rival to the United States," the editorial read. "China's space program is a crucial part of that buildup."

Joan Johnson-Freese is a space policy analyst for the Naval War College and a longtime observer of China's space program.

She thinks a partnership is inevitable given the high cost of space exploration.

"Look at our partnership with Russia -- a partnership that was unthinkable during the Cold War," she said. "It will eventually happen with China, but again, it is all determined by politics."

Why partner with China? Space exploration is expensive -- really expensive.

It is estimated that the cost to return American astronauts to the moon by 2020 will be about $104 billion.

A trip to Mars has been estimated at more than $500 billion.

The International Space Station has cost $23.1 billion so far, and it's only half finished.

And, the budget for the space shuttle is $4.78 billion for this year.

No individual country can afford to take a trip to the moon and then on to Mars without help anymore, so it will take a partnership between countries to bankroll extensive space exploration.

The Chinese are relative newcomers to spaceflight but have already successfully launched two manned low Earth spaceflights and four unmanned Schenzous into space, so observers expect little problem with this launch.