NASA's Not Alone In Facing Manned Spaceflight Budget
Crunch
After wowing global
audiences over the past three years, China is reportedly now coming
to terms with budgetary constraints and technical challenges that
will delay its fledgling space program's next planned launch for
over a year... and will bump a planned moon mission to 2021 at the
earliest.
"We're in no rush. We have to take it one step at a time,"
senior Chinese space official Huang Chunping told Reuters Sunday,
during a break in a meeting of parliament.
The next manned Chinese spaceflight -- originally scheduled for
2007 -- will now likely liftoff in late 2008, due to technical
issues with the next-generation space capsule designed to seat up
to three taikonauts. That mission is also scheduled to include at
least one spacewalk, a first for the Chinese program.
Despite ongoing plans to launch an unmanned lunar orbiter in
2007 -- which would be China's first satellite to travel outside
earth orbit -- technical challenges and tight budgets may also
conspire to delay a Chinese moon mission until 2021, Huang
says.
"Putting a man on the moon -- it will be impossible for at least
the next 15 years," he said.
After riding the success of its first manned spaceflight in
2003 -- followed last October by a two-man trip lasting five
days -- China appears to be grappling with the
economic realities of a space program that competes for
budgetary dollars with programs needed closer to home.
"Our country can't invest all its money in space exploration,
despite its importance. It has to be viewed in a rational way,"
Huang said. "China is now, for example, paying particular attention
to solving rural issues" -- where an estimated 750 million Chinese
live.
"The cities in China are like Europe, but the countryside is
like Africa," Huang added, saying he understands why funds he'd
like to see go towards spaceflight are needed at home. Huang
himself grew up poor in a village in Fujian, according to
Reuters.
Huang is quick to point out the delays aren't due to
insurmountable problems -- but rather a lack of funds and
resources, compared to space programs in the US and Russia.
"Our technology has no problems, nor do our designs. But
economically we can't do it. That's why we're so behind space
powers like Russia and the United States," he said.
Don't count the Chinese out, however. The country has come far
since the days when Mao Zedong declared that China was incapable of
launching even a potato into space. That was 1957... the year the
Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1.