BEIJING, 1 October 2003 — Legend has it that toward the end of the 15th century, a Chinese official named Wan Hu attached 30 rockets to a kite-like monoplane, lashed himself firmly into a seated position and ordered the rocket fuses lit. There was a colossal, blinding detonation, and both Wan and his craft took off.
Legend does not tell us where the mythic Wan landed, but his supposed exploit has bolstered popular claims to China as the land of the first attempt at manned space flight.
Now, five centuries later, China is on the verge of launching an astronaut or two, according to hints dropped in the Chinese press and by Chinese diplomats abroad. This would make it only the third nation to put a man into space, after Russia and the United States.
Indeed, with the celebration of China’s national day on Wednesday, some Chinese journalists are feverishly speculating that the first mission may be launched on the day commemorating 54 years of Communist rule. Others, also claiming inside knowledge, confidently predict a launch date of Oct. 17. “This is about 90 percent political and 10 percent technical,” said David Baker, the editor of Jane’s Space Directory, the British space and weapons analytical group. “It’s an important signal about what China would like the world to think about its technical virility.” Still, unlike the American manned space program that was minutely covered by the media from its outset, the Chinese program remains largely secret, with only occasional tidbits doled out to the official press.
If reports in Hong Kong newspapers are true, the leading candidate to go into space is a pilot named Chen Long, who was trained by Chinese air force pilots at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut center in Russia.
Dubbed the “Shenzhou,” or “Divine Boat” or “Divine Vessel” by the government, the tea-cup-shaped craft resembles the Russian Soyuz capsules, although modified somewhat, particularly in the area of emergency escapes, according to Jane’s. Some space analysts even suggest the Shenzhou is largely of Chinese design and technologically superior to the Soyuz.
For a country so poor it remains a major recipient of help from multilateral donors, including the World Bank, China’s space program is expensive.
Media reports suggest it has cost taxpayers 19 billion yuan, or $2.3 billion to date — about half what NASA spends annually on its shuttle program — a considerable sum in a country where tens of millions of rural villagers subsist on less than $100 a year.
A successful launch, however, would admit China to an exclusive scientific circle. It has established its presence as a major participant in space exploration and technology, however, with 50 orbiting satellites and successful space launches to date.
Some analysts say it is not pure science and exploration that is driving China. The Pentagon in July delivered a report to Congress bluntly assaying the manned space program: “While one of the strongest immediate motivations for this program appears to be political prestige, China’s ... efforts almost certainly will contribute to improved military space systems in the 2010-2020 timeframe.”
The report quoted a Chinese naval captain, Shen Zhongchang, as writing: “The mastery of outer space will be a requisite for military victory, with outer space becoming the new commanding heights for combat.”
What little can be gleaned from Chinese publications suggests that a Chinese astronaut is to orbit Earth for less than 24 hours after being launched from the Jiuquan Space Launch Center in northwestern Gansu Province. The mission is to be controlled by the newly built Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center, 30 miles northwest of the capital.
So far, the Chinese have launched four unmanned Shenzhou capsules into space, the most recent parachuting to land in the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia on Jan. 5 after 108 revolutions of Earth, a seven-day journey. That mission, according to Chinese media reports, carried a full-sized dummy in a space suit, along with 52 science projects, and was declared a complete success by then-President Jiang Zemin.