Dwayne Day vs. China

Dwayne Day vs. China

Rand Simberg points out that Dwayne Day's article in today's Space Review makes a series of glaring errors:

"The only demonstrated payoff of human spaceflight is prestige. There is nothing that a human can do in low Earth orbit, other than the study of other humans, that a robot cannot do better."

This is of course an absurd set of statements. Simberg goes after the second one, citing examples like the Skylab fixit mission and two other missions that involved astronauts and the shuttles' robot Canadarms. However, he misses the point: in order to definitively state that there is nothing that a human can do in low orbit that a robot cannot, empirical evidence provided by the operation of a teleoperated robot is required, to provide a comparasin to human performance. So far the only data available is for the Canadarm on the shuttles and the Canadarm II on the ISS - in both cases, teleoperation is from a distance measured in a few meters rather than hundreds or thousands of kilometers, and astronauts are close by to jump in and assist if needed. There is no data for any other robots operating in low earth orbit, so no meaningful comparasins can be made.

The first statement quoted above is equally nonsensical. It is like saying "of what use is a baby?" - Day is referring to China's space program, and can see only national prestige as a payoff. But there are other payoffs to consider:

1) A nation that can rendezvous two or more satellites is capable of building a space station of its own. From what rumors I have read, the Shenzou modules link together in a straight line, and only a small capsule returns to earth. The remainder of the (service) modules remain in orbit, linked together. The Chinese learned something from the fiasco of the waste of space shuttle external tanks: once you put something in orbit, keep it there. By the time China launches one or two more flights, their space station will already be larger than Mir. They won't need international cooperation or competition. And for an investment so far of $2 billion, that's not bad at all. The Canadian government shrugs numbers like that off for trifles like a National Gun Registry.

2) Methodical progression dictates that nothing be wasted and that everything have dual (or more) use. By learning from others and skipping several steps, and by leaving infrastructure in orbit, the Chinese will have created a logical place to serve as a drydock/staging area for assembling missions to the moon or points beyond. They also have a logical place for an orbital fuel depot. The shenzou configuration allows China to leapfrog over everyone else in the quest to make reliable,inexpensive, regular flights to the moon.

More from Dwayne Day:
"The more money China spends on human spaceflight, the less money it has to spend on missiles pointed at the United States or Taiwan."

Again, dual uses. Technology adequate to accurately place a human in orbit is sufficient for use in military applications. Experience gained from the operation of manned rockets is adapted for use by the military. And any improvement in a manned rocket is a potential improvent in a missile.

Day goes on:
"In fact, the military aspects of the Shenzhou program demonstrate this point. The Chinese president wanted a human spacecraft for prestige purposes, but in order to get it he had to compromise with the military and allow it to be used for missions such as photoreconnaissance and signals intelligence. The military seems to have learned a lesson from the United States and Soviet Union, who discovered decades ago that humans have no military utility in space, so the taikonaut deploys the orbital module with its military payloads in orbit and then departs, leaving the other spacecraft to operate on its own.

However, this is not only a bureaucratic compromise, but a mission compromise for the military as well. Due to requirements to bring the manned capsule back to China, Shenzhou does not fly in an orbit that swings very far north or south, so the amount of territory it can photograph or snoop electronically is limited. An ideal military spacecraft would also take advantage of all the extra mass and volume that is currently devoted to keeping the human passenger alive. Linking their military space program to their human space program is simply an expensive kludge that wastes money."

I will temporarily suspend disbelief and acknowledge that Day may be correct that China's sole reason(s) for a manned space program is(are) national pride and/or international prestige. I will further presume that he is familiar with the relationship of the military to the ruling elite in China, and that a compromise with the military was necessary. However, as he points out in the next paragraph, such a compromise would compromise both objectives.

As such, one of two possibilities exist:

1) Day is incorrect about China's motives for a manned program and/or the relationship between the military and ruling elite in China.

2) The Chinese do not learn from the mistakes of others but instead repeat them.

I am disinclined to believe that the Chinese did not study the mistakes of the Russian and American space programs. They probably studied the mistakes more than the successes; mistakes are opportunites to learn. They will have surely noted the example of the Space Shuttle, the result of wildly divergent mission specifications being forced into a single vehicle.

With the shuttle, the old saying about a camel being a horse designed by committee certainly applied. Cross-range ability (required by the military) gave it wings and a tail (how much of this much-vaunted cross-range ability has been used anyhow? Has there been a single polar-orbit mission?), bureaucratic fiddling resulted in engines that needed to be recovered every flight... the list goes on and on.

The Chinese are unlikely to have made a similar gross error with Shenzou.

From there Day goes on to extol the virtues of involving the Chinese in the International Space Station, hopefully to divert their resources in what Day considers a wasteful manner merely for, again, national prestige. This ignores the fact that the Chinese already have their own space station in an orbit accessible from their own launch facilities.

The Chinese are not stupid, and I doubt that they will fall for Day's ploy.