Want a Ride to Orbit? Call the Russians (or Chinese)
Anybody who follows the long-to-type, but wonderfully simple howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com noticed the number took a big jump this week. China’s launch of the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft added to the tally. The three “Yǔháng yuán” (aka taikonauts, aka Chinese astronauts) joined two Americans, an Italian and three Russians in low earth orbit on Tuesday.
It’s the fifth time the world’s most populous nation has put humans in space and it highlights big changes in the space community. NASA, once the undisputed leader, is temporarily on the sidelines. The United States is in a launching slump.
With America at a rare moment of vulnerability, and an ambitious newcomer on the scene, the precedents of international space cooperation set over the past 30 years could soon face their biggest challenge since the Sputnik era.
After putting hundreds of astronauts into orbit over the past 50 years, flying nine missions to the moon, and landing there six times, the United States has literally been bumped to the passenger seat. It hasn’t been able to launch astronauts into space on its own since 2011, when the space shuttle program was retired.
Not without coincidence, China is moving full steam ahead. Two months after the space shuttle flew for the last time, China launched the Tiangong-1 space module. Chinese astronauts visited the bus-sized orbiting laboratory last June (including the country’s first female astronaut). Thursday morning the Shenzhou-10 docked with the station, and the crew of two men and one woman will spend the next 11 days conducting experiments as well as teaching lessons to Chinese students on the ground.
China’s go-it-alone strategy puts it at odds with the space community, which has conducted joint missions on the International Space Station for years, and on MIR back into the 1990s. It’s too soon to say where this will lead, but it brings the first real competition to the U.S space program since the break up of the Soviet Union.
There are lots of good plans in the pipeline. NASA is investing in the development of a future manned spacecraft and launch vehicle, and three companies — SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp — are all competing to develop the next astronaut taxi. The most optimistic date for NASA to launch an astronaut into space from the U.S. is 2016. In the meantime, the agency has signed a contract for six seats on Russia’s robust and reliable Soyuz spacecraft at a cost of $71 million each. And they may have to buy more to continue missions to the ISS, where Americans Chris Cassidy and Karen Nyberg are currently stationed.
That kind of cooperation is a model for the future of space exploration, and all the more remarkable for its origins in the cold war.
The space race has come a long way since the 23-inch sphere known as Sputnik beeped across the sky in 1957. In the years that followed, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. rocketed to many black sky milestones: first dog, first chimpanzee, first man, first woman, first two- and three-man crews, first tortoises around the moon and first spacewalk to name a few. After conceding first place to the Soviet Union for many of the early firsts, we were the first to fly humans beyond earth orbit, and of course, first to put them on the moon.
In China today, space flight is a source of national pride much like it was in the U.S. in the 1960s. But after 135 shuttle launches, spaceflight has lost its luster here. It is unlikely the average American can name an U.S. astronaut who has flown in space over the past decade. The recently earthbound Chris Hadfield is perhaps the most inspirational astronaut in a generation with more than a million twitter followers and a David Bowie cover. He’s the closest thing to a famous astronaut today. He’s Canadian. And they had to buy a seat from the Russians too.
Today our former cold war adversaries are in the driver’s seat. We live in an era of cooperation rather than in a race over who can be first. The Russians build the rockets, and — at least temporarily — we buy the tickets. Now there’s a new kid on the block and they’re forging ahead on their own. China might be late to the space traveling era, but if their past record in new endeavors is any indication, don’t expect them to be behind for long.When the time comes, let’s hope the cozy scientific cooperation we’ve enjoyed in orbit for so long doesn’t burn up on re-entry.
