The Chinese deserve to be congratulated on the successful launch and recovery of an orbital space vehicle capable of carrying a crew, who will be known, not as astronauts nor cosmonauts but “taikonauts”, a derivation of the Chinese word for “space”. The first manned mission is widely expected later this year. The coolness with which China’s accomplishment has been received by the other “space powers” underlines, in its way, the reality behind space research, once hailed by PR men as the pursuit of pure knowledge. For a start, much of the technology that the Americans have already used against Iraq and more recently against Serbia and then Afghanistan was a direct spinoff of the hugely expensive NASA space program.
It is not simply the spy satellites that NASA launches for the military and the eavesdropping US National Security Agency which matter to the military. Much of the hugely complex technology that has gone into the likes of cruise missiles and smart bombs owes a great deal to the discoveries of NASA scientists.
The old space race between the Soviet Union and the United States was a matter of propaganda and national pride. For China, however, full membership of the space club has always been and will remain a matter, both of asserting its position among the great powers and developing for itself the technology that has already come to the Americans and the Russians.
Space, therefore, remains a technological battleground and a minefield which could one day become a physical battleground. Both Washington and Moscow are known to have invested in satellite destruction programs, though, hopefully, these have been put on hold in favor of the cooperative effort that is going into the international space station.
The problem is that because of the technology spinoff that have been used to create sophisticated armaments, neither of the two leading space nations is prepared to share all of their knowledge with outsiders. Therefore, whatever amity may now exist between the Russians and the Americans on matters of space is not extended to the Chinese.
In economic terms, this century is likely to close with China as a dominant, if not the dominant world player. The massive entrepreneurial and innovative potential that has been unleashed by the economic revolution that is sweeping this huge country makes it a near certainty. Therefore, behind the lack of cooperation shown by Moscow and Washington to Beijing’s space efforts lies the desire of Russian and US big business, especially the latter, to preserve for themselves as much market power as possible for as long as possible. As with so many conflicts around the world, money lies at the root. Beijing will therefore go its own way in space. Thus are being sown the seeds of future confrontation, if not conflict.
If only a fraction of the ingenuity, not to say money, that the great powers lavish on their space programs, could be deployed to bring peace, development, education and opportunities to the poor regions of the world, perhaps, it would eliminate the primary cause of human conflicts — the sense of deprivation and alienation. Then, perhaps, there would not be any need for the weapons these great powers are spending so much money on.
