China's successful launch of two taikonuats
in its second manned space mission Wednesday tells the world a lot about how
serious, formidable and well-prepared the Chinese space program is.

    "You will again show that the
Chinese people have the will, confidence and capability to mount scientific
peaks ceaselessly, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told veteran fighter pilots Col.
Fen Junlong and Col. Nie Haisheng after they blasted off from the Jinquan
Satellite Launch Center in Ganju province in China's desert northwest.

    First, the Chinese are not going to sit
on their laurels. They are entirely serious about developing their own space
station and permanent base on the Moon and, indeed, look likely to have far more
industrial and financial resources to do this in the foreseeable future than
either the United States or Russia.

    For while the Chinese waited for a full
two years to follow up their first manned launch of taikonaut Col. Yang Liwei on
Oct. 2, 2003, they were not content simply to repeat the exercise: They sent up
a two man capsule rather than just another single-man one.

    Second, two years is quite a long time,
so the Chinese made clear that while their goals in space are ambitious, they
are not going to needlessly risk taikonauts' lives or international
embarrassment by pushing ahead too fast with their program.

    Without access to any base closer to
the equator like Cape Canaveral, Florida is for the United States, or France's
launch base for its Ariane satellites in French Guyana, the Chinese limit their
manned space launches from Gansu to either spring or fall, when the climate is
temperate, and conditions are neither too hot nor too cold. They therefore
allowed three previous windows of opportunities for a manned space mission go by
before going ahead with this one.

    Third, the Chinese are not in a rush
because they do not have to be. They have no serious rivals for their expanding
manned space program over the next decade or so.

    The Chinese, of course, are watching
closely what the United States and Russia are doing in space. While the Russian
space program is on schedule, and looking good, even with Russia's booming oil
revenues, there is no plan at the moment to spectacularly expand it. The
Russians have only made clear that they are prepared to operate the
International Space Station by themselves if the United States cannot or will
not pull its own weight on it. Russia appears to have no plans to send its
cosmonauts to the Moon by itself.

    The U.S. manned space program is in far
worse shape. NASA still plans to fly the remaining shuttle fleet on 19 missions
over the next four years before retiring the three craft in 2010. But in reality
one knows when, or even if, the three remaining space shuttles will fly again
following the concern about possible possible being caused to the Discovery on
its most recent mission at the end of July, the first since the February 2003
immolation of the Challenger shuttle on reentry.

    And NASA's recently announced plan to
send U.S. astronauts back to the Moon will have to wait for the successful
development of man-rated missiles and space capsules to replace the shuttles.
That is certainly not expected to happen before 2010 at the earliest and even if
all goes well, the next U.S. manned mission to the Moon may have to wait until
2018, 46 years after U.S. astronauts last set foot on it.

    Fourth, the Chinese are confident.
Unlike most of the Soviet launches through the Cold War, but like all U.S.
manned space flights, they broadcast the launch of their Shenzhou-6 space craft
Wednesday live on national state television. That augurs a great deal of
confidence in the reliability of their technology. (There was at least a touch
of U.S. cultural influence: The Long March rocket booster blasted off to the
accompanying theme music from "Battlestar Galactica")

    Fifth, the two year leap for a single
manned space craft orbiting the earth for one day to a two-man mission that will
stay up for five days is also revealing. It compares well with the similarly
rapid evolution to two-manned space flight in the U.S. and Soviet space programs
in the early 1960s.

    The United States, indeed, went from
orbiting its first astronaut around the earth, Col. John Glenn, the second
American in space after Alan B. Shepard, Jr. in 1962, to orbiting the moon only
six-and-half years later at the end of 1968. If the Chinese can develop their
booster rockets reliably over the next six or seven years, there is no reason
why they could not become the second nation in history to send men around the
Moon by 2011 or 2012. Their current big Shenzhou spacecraft certainly has the
size to carry the necessary air and provisions. And orbiting the Moon is a far
less complex and risky undertaking than having a spacecraft land upon it and
then take off again. 

    美国合众国际社高级新闻分析家马丁·西夫日前撰文指出，中国近日成功发射第二艘载人飞船将两名宇航员送入太空，向世界充分显示了中国实施空间计划的务实态度、长远目标和扎实的准备。

    据SpaceDaily网站日前援引马丁·西夫的文章说，在2003年10月成功发射“神舟”五号载人飞船之后，中国并没有满足既得荣誉，而是紧盯建立自己的空间站和月球永久基地的长远目标。看起来，中国为达到这一目标做好了比美国或俄罗斯更加充分的技术和财力上的长期准备。在将近两年的时间里，中国科学家没有原地踏步，他们此次发射了载有两名宇航员的飞船。这种进取而又务实的态度，避免了在空间计划上的冒进政策和可能带来的无谓的人员损失及国际尴尬。 

   
文章指出，与中国发展空间计划的扎实稳重相比，俄罗斯眼下并没有制定大力扩展航天活动的计划。尽管俄罗斯的空间计划仍在按部就班地进行，并且以丰富的石油资源作为保证，但他们仅仅满足即使在没有美国人参与的情况下维持国际空间站正常运转的目标，他们似乎也没有打算依靠自己力量将本国宇航员送上月球。

   
与此同时，美国开展空间计划的情况更显糟糕。美国宇航局仍然希望在2010年以前继续完成现有航天飞机的19次发射任务。该局近日宣布，计划中的第二次宇航员登月行动必须等到新型人控火箭和太空舱顺利取代现有的航天飞机之时，而这一研发工作最快也要等到2010年才能见分晓。因此，即使一切进展顺利，美国宇航员第二次踏上月球土地的梦想也许要等到2018年才能实现。

    文章说，如果中国能够抓紧未来6年至7年时间，很有可能在2011年或2012年成为人类史上第二个将人送上月球轨道的国家。

    （何晓鸿）