Former NASA Official, Astronaut Urge China Partnership in ISShttp://news.yahoo.com/former-nasa-official-astronaut-urge-china-partnership-iss-221900905.html (http://news.yahoo.com/former-nasa-official-astronaut-urge-china-partnership-iss-221900905.html)
By Mark Whittington | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 19 hrs ago
The debate over whether to and to what extent the United States should cooperate with China in space has received new attention thanks to a recent oped in Discovery News by a former NASA official and a former NASA astronaut.
However critics of such Sino-American space engagement remain.
The case for China becoming a partner in the International Space Station
George Abbey, former director of the Johnson Space Center, and Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut, make the case for making China a partner in the International Space Station. While Abbey and Chiao make a number of claims about the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and the heavy lift Space Launch System, their main argument rests on the so-called "space flight gap." With the end of the space shuttle program, the only means by which astronauts can access the ISS is via the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Bringing in the Chinese as ISS partners would add the Shenzhou, a manned spacecraft flown in a number of missions that can be adapted docking with the ISS. The article also makes the claim that America would enhance its space leadership if it takes the initiative in making China an ISS partner.
The Heritage Foundation urges caution
Writing for the Heritage Foundation in June, Dean Cheng urged caution in any cooperation effort with China in the manned spaceflight field. Cheng suggests that China would be unwilling to engage in such cooperation unless it was advantageous to it. China would use such a cooperation effort to constrain American space efforts and to engage in legal warfare that would be designed to enhance its state-supported aerospace companies at the expense of the United States and American companies.
China's space efforts designed to deploy its own space station, manned moon landing
While the debate still rages in the West over cooperating in space with China, that country is forging ahead with its own indigenous space program. International Business Times, quoting an Agence France Press story, announced that the Shenzhou-10 mission is slated to visit the Tiangong-1 module currently in orbit around the Earth. The Shenzhou-9 had previously visited the space module, carrying out China's first manned docking between two spacecraft. China intends to build a multi-module space station of its own by the end of the current decade. Further in the future, China has hinted that it would like to land its space explorers on the lunar surface, a feat last accomplished by NASA 40 years ago, with the flight of Apollo 17 in December 1972.
China would be unwilling to engage in such cooperation unless it was advantageous to it.