Those flights will set the stage for construction and launch of a second space station two or three times as large as Tiangong. Meanwhile, the Chinese might visit the International Space Station, but they’ve made it clear they are not interested in being a junior partner in somebody else’s project.
Building their bigger station will require a more powerful booster, called the Long March 5. Equivalent in size and power to the Ariane 5, Delta IV, or Ares I, it will hoist 25 000 kilograms, two and a half times as much as today’s Long March rockets lift. Long March 5 will be able to carry heavy communications satellites and send spacecraft into Earth-escape trajectories.
Ye Peijan, chief designer of the Chang’e-1 lunar probe, recently disclosed a schedule that calls for Chang’e-2 by 2011 (to test soft landing) and Chang’e-3 in 2013 (to land instruments on the lunar surface). Beginning in 2017, a new phase of lunar exploration will begin using heavier spacecraft launched by the Long March 5. These later vehicles will include rovers and sample-return craft.
So far, the Chinese have proven to be masters at adapting technology from other countries. The Russian Orlan-M space suit, for example, was the model for the Chinese-made suit used by its first spacewalker last year. But one design feature—-an overhead window in the rigid-mounted helmet nicknamed the ”moon roof”--was not required in the Chinese suit, so they simply omitted it.
Chinese space engineers have also seamlessly repurposed domestic designs taken from other industries. For the Chang’e-1 lunar orbiter, its builders adapted the design of a geosynchronous communications satellite and modified the launch profile of its booster. With mission-specific instrumentation, they achieved an impressive success on their first launch.
These kinds of tricks could provide China with shortcuts into deep space, enabling it to outcompete countries with deeper pockets and more experience. By the end of the next decade, space station Tiangong-2 could make an ideal habitat for long cruises in lunar orbit or to the Earth–moon Lagrangian points, where the two bodies’ gravity fields are in equilibrium. Later, aboard a Shenzhou/Tiangong-class habitat, taikonauts could venture into interplanetary space to scout out the sun–Earth Lagrangian points, which could someday serve as jumping-off points for missions to Mars and other deep-space destinations. Several years ago, a panel led by NASA’s former associate administrator for space science Wesley Huntress proposed that kind of step-by-step strategy for the United States, as an alternative to its moon-then-Mars program, which is named Constellation.
China’s space engineers have learned quickly—not just from their own experiences but from other people’s as well (a commendable trait that NASA would do well to copy). If they can overcome obsolete managerial attitudes, they could become even faster learners. The average age of the Chinese teams now at work is much lower than that of their American or European counterparts. That means the Chinese will be hitting their peak productive years in a decade or two, just as Mars comes into focus.
For more articles, go to Special Report: Why Mars? Why Now?
