China To Explore Moon Sooner: Griffin

Sept. 18, 2007 — -- NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says he believes China will return to the moon with human explorers before the U.S. accomplishes that goal with its Constellation Program, as the economic competition fueled by spaceflight activities intensifies.

Delivering the first of a planned series of lectures commemorating NASA's 50th anniversary, Griffin told a Washington audience Sept. 17 that there is a lack of public appreciation in the U.S. for the spacefaring skills of Russia, China, and India, as well as of NASA's traditional spaceflight partners in Europe and Japan.

"It lacks only the decision to do it for those nations or societies to do exciting and prominent things," Griffin said. "I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are."

Elaborating on his remarks via e-mail later, Griffin said he was specifically referring to a human return to the moon by China, without development of a new Saturn V-class launch vehicle like the Ares V planned under NASA's space exploration vision.

"If one is willing to make use of multiple Earth-orbit rendezvous, a really big rocket is not required," Griffin wrote. "It's pretty cumbersome, but it can be done."

"I think that when that happens Americans will not like it, but they will just have to not like it," Griffin told a questioner following his address. "I think we will see, as we have seen with China's introductory manned spaceflights so far, we will see again that nations look up to nations that appear to be at the top of the technical pyramid, and they want to do deals with those nations."

In his prepared address, Griffin outlined the ways that NASA technology has driven the U.S. economy, setting difficult but exciting goals that encouraged the nation's scientists and engineers to develop world-leading technologies, such as integrated circuitry.

"These capabilities now permeate our entire industrial base, and the use of integrated circuits is so ubiquitous, in devices whose very existence would have been almost unimaginable only a few years ago, that we no longer even notice it," he said. "Cellphones are given away as a competitive inducement to select one wireless provider or rate plan over another. Devices that can store gigabytes of information, a capability once beyond price, are given away as keychain fobs in promotional advertising."

That process continues with such cutting-edge technologies as quantum computing, which promises to "revolutionize" the information industry, Griffin said. And as NASA continues to push its own return to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars, he said, U.S.-developed technology will advance right along with it.

"Every aspect of human knowledge will be tested and advanced: physics, chemistry, biology and their practical applications in engineering, medicine, materials science, computer science, robotics, artificial intelligence, power, and many other fields - and we haven't even mentioned rocket science," Griffin said.

Griffin said he hopes to have a new Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) partner funded by the end of 2007 or early next year. The agency formally notified Rocketplane Kistler (RpK), one of two private companies tapped to split about $500 million in COTS funds to develop space-station resupply vehicles, that it is not meeting its milestones. That notification set up a termination process that probably will lead to a new competition for the roughly $175 million left in funds RpK might otherwise have gotten (DAILY, Sept. 13).