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.

Craig Covault, senior editor with Aviation Week & Space Technology, has observed China's space program firsthand while traveling to China with NASA's Griffin.

"They have approached it not as a race, but as a project they are taking the necessary time to do right," he said. "So I think they will succeed in the end in not only having a good first flight, but a series of manned spaceflights over the next five years."

China has mapped out an ambitious space program to the year 2040, including:

Several taikonaut launches on the Schenzou

Building a space laboratory -- linking two modules together

A moon landing by 2010 leading to polar bases for science

Unmanned mission to Mars by 2040

China has long wished to be a partner in the International Space Station, but has been prevented from joining the partnership because of the country's record on human rights, military proliferation issues, and technology transfer concerns.

Covault agrees a partnership of some sort is inevitable.

"I think it will start with small science payloads that are Chinese flying on the station," he said, "and then some years down the road, the launch of a Chinese astronaut on the shuttle, then perhaps 10 years from now, allowing the Schenzou to dock on the station."

China and the United States are both in a race to the moon.

The last time the United States set its sight on the moon it took eight years from a standing start to get there.

Current plans have the United States back on the moon by 2010.