A Waste: China’s Space Program

China’s first attempt at the moon actually began about 500 years ago when Wan Hu tried to reach the heavens by tying fireworks to his back. Spectators watched as Hu lit the fuse, the resulting explosion resulted in China’s first, of many, disasters trying to reach space ("Divine Lift" 1). China’s modern space program sprouted in the 1960’s with the development of their nuclear weapons program. In this program the Chinese developed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, (ICBM) ("Heavenly Pursuits" 2). Surprisingly, it was the United States who unknowingly helped the Chinese the most, because in the 1950’s as the Communist Scare was gripping the U.S. it deported a communist sympathizer named Qian Xuesen. Xuesen was a Rocket Engineer for the California Institute of Technol

One of China’s largest problems would have to be it’s own government. China wants to take this new-found technology and wonder and turn it into a killing tool. China has plans to build spy satellites with the power to spy on any place on the globe("Heavenly Pursuits" 2). If that wasn’t bad enough the new telemetry systems and rocket boosters have enabled better Chinese ICBMs, missiles that could one day break through United States missile defense system (Forney 2). The United States is trying to halt this threat by slapping China with weapons proliferation. This order will stop the Chinese from being able to send up commercial satellites, which is a major money maker for the space program (Kahn 2). Still, the United States is still scared of the potential Chinese threat, this is shown in a statement from the Pentagon to Congress, "China’s manned space efforts almost certainly will contribute to improved military systems in the 2010-2020 time frame" (qtd. in Forney 2). However, the bottom line is that the population, along with many experts are wondering why China still needs economic aid while a $2 billion man is floating in space ("Heavenly Pursuit" 3)?

China wasn’t satisfied just launching satellites so in 1992 they began working

Another problem of the Chinese space program is that of it really offers no technological breakthroughs. The crowning achievement to this point has been Shen-Zhou which has brought a man to and from space how ever Shen-Zhou is actually a rip-off of a Soviet design of their space capsule Soyuz. Most of the Chinese taikonauts have been trained at Star City a training site in Russia. Most of the life-support systems aboard the ship have been purchased from Russia. U.S. companies like Boeing and Hughes Electronics have aided the Chinese by giving guidance, telemetry, and aerodynamics systems of the rocket boosters (Kahn 3).

China’s problems are long and many. China has a very tight budget and can ill-afford to waste money on any special program. However the one unmanned test of Shen-Zhou cost over $120 million. This figure is believed to be low because, like most things in China, the military controls the budget of the space progr

Some topics in this essay:
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