China eyes its first spacewalk

By Leonard David

updated 3:39 p.m. ET June 24, 2008

China is stepping up and out in the world of space exploration.

Space officials in the country are readying the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft for an October sendoff, one that will carry a trio of their "taikonauts" into Earth orbit. The mission not only promises to strengthen China's human space travel agenda, but also provides a glimpse into actions to be undertaken in the future.

China has initiated a step-by-step approach in flying their taikonauts: The single-person Shenzhou 5 flight in 2003 of 14 orbits; the two-person voyage of Shenzhou 6 in 2005 lasting 5 days; and soon to head skyward, a threesome of space travelers. And on this flight, one of those space travelers is to carry out China's first spacewalk, also known as extravehicular activity, or EVA for short.

In some ways, the upcoming mission spotlights the hop, skip, and jump abilities of China in comparison to U.S. space history.

For the U.S., the Mercury series of single-seat flights led to the two-person missions of Gemini spacecraft, followed by sojourns of the Apollo three-person crew capsule. More to the point, in the U.S., the first human-carrying orbital flight of Mercury was in 1962; Gemini in 1965; and Apollo in 1968.

So is there a true measure of growth, albeit somewhat skewed given the driving nature of the Soviet Union versus the U.S. "Moon race"?

Case in point: If this next mission for China is successful in attaining orbit, that country will have taken something like a year less time to move from single-seat orbital flight to Apollo three-seat space travel — contrasted to U.S. human spaceflight progress in Earth orbit.

Learning curve
On one hand, China's steadfast evolution in human space treks is laudable. On the other, given that status card, leading spaceflight aficionados seem to sense different take-home messages.

"Implications, as far as I can see ... few, if any," said Joan Johnson-Freese, an analyst of China's space policy and Chair of the National Security Decision-Making Department at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

Johnson-Freese told Space.com that the U.S. Mercury program of the 1960s was spearheading research just to see if humans could swallow in space ... or how the human psyche would react once in Earth orbit. There were lots of medical questions, she noted.

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NASA's Project Mercury was quickly followed by a salvo of 10 human-carrying Gemini flights from March 1965 to November 1966. All-in-all, piloted Mercury and Gemini orbital outings tally up to 14 flights in five years, Johnson-Freese observed — and don't forget those two earlier and piloted suborbital Mercury missions.

"Technology development was incremental because it was all new, but consistent," Johnson-Freese stressed.

"The Chinese will have three flights with a successful mission next fall. They have been able to benefit from lots of lessons learned from both the Americans and the Russians. That is not to downplay the difficulty of the technology or the achievements of the Chinese...they just have the luxury of starting much higher on the learning curve," she concluded.

Pow ... pow ... pow
Given the years of mastering human space travel, is China's blossoming to-do list in order to operate in Earth orbit worth spotlighting?

"Yes, absolutely ... it is worth flagging," said Dean Cheng, an Asian affairs specialist at the U.S.-based Center for Naval Analysis in Alexandria, Virginia.

"Now, the flip side to that, of course, is that it has also been done before. So it's not like they need to engineer everything from scratch," Cheng told Space.com, adding that China can depend on designs similar to those proven to work by the U.S. and former Russians. "But, yes, it is nonetheless impressive."

Cheng points out, however: "The main difference ... there were more Mercury and Gemini flights in the intervening period. What is interesting about the Chinese effort is that they are doing it with so few flights. Four unmanned flights ... then pow-pow- pow ... one-man, two-man, three-man/EVA."

Cheng also underscored the built-in danger to nations that ramp up human spaceflight expertise. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union lost people during their respective run-ups.

"You have to wonder if the Chinese can sustain a perfect space record," he added. "Obviously, one hope's that they can."

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