U.S. losing space lead, experts warn Congress

Robert S. Boyd
McClatchy

America's once clear dominance in space is eroding as other nations, including China, Iran and North Korea, step up their activities, a panel of experts told the House subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Thursday.

"Others are catching up fast," said Marty Hauser, vice president for Washington operations at the Space Foundation, an advocacy organization headquarters in Colorado Springs. "Of particular note over the past decade is the emergence of China's human spaceflight capabilities."

Russia now leads the world in space launches. China recently became the third nation, after the United States and Russia, to send its own astronauts out for a spacewalk.

"China is laying the groundwork for a long-term space program with or without us," said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington. "We should worry if we're not out there with them."

China's rocket launch facilities are "state of the art," Hauser said.

In a competition once limited to the U.S. and the Soviet Union, 60 nations now have their own space agencies, panelists said. Thirteen nations have active space programs, and eight are capable of launching their own satellites into orbit.

More HERE.

Cosmonaut says Russia falling behind in space

Vladimir Isachenkov
AP

Russia lacks a viable program for developing a new spacecraft and will likely fall behind in the space race, a veteran Russian cosmonaut said in an interview published Friday.

Efforts to build a successor to the 40-year old Soyuz spacecraft have dragged on with no end in sight, Mikhail Tyurin told the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

Tyurin, a veteran of two missions to the International Space Station in 2001 and 2007, blamed the slow progress on a lack of clear goals and poor coordination.

"They have issued an order for a new spacecraft without having any concept," Tyurin said.

He said officials' talk of using the ship to fly to the International Space Station, and then the moon and Mars, are unfeasible. "One vehicle can't be both a steamroller and a Formula One racer," he said.

Russia's Federal Space Agency had no immediate comment.

Full story HERE.

Ambitions for Kourou

Further proof of the birth of Space Race II, ESA plans for expansions at Kourou, it's ideally situated spaceport

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter

BBC

He is content, however, because this is just the right kind of depression compared with the one his Arianespace company was contemplating just a few years ago.

This is the fire bowl, recently dug from granite, that will deflect the exhaust plume and noise away from a Soyuz rocket as the Russian vehicle lifts clear of the launch gantry on its maiden voyage from the Kourou spaceport next year.

It is all part of the grand plan to provide the complete package at Europe's launch complex in French Guiana - any payload to any orbit.

The portfolio will include Soyuz, a medium-class launcher; the company's workhorse heavy-lift vehicle, the Ariane 5; and a soon to debut mini-rocket known as Vega.

The satellite industry likes the prospect of it all and has given Arianespace a bulging order book; the French-run business has posted sales of just under one billion euros for the past year.

It is all a far cry from May 2003 when a flat market and the disastrous failure of an Ariane vehicle in flight had brought the company to its knees.

Read more HERE.

China v. US: space race or miscommunication?

Jeff Foust
Space Review

It would be difficult for one to be familiar with current events in space over the last few years, or even the last few months, and not be aware of the perception that the United States and China are, or will soon enter, a full-fledged space race against each other. On more than one occasion in the last several months NASA administrator Mike Griffin warned that he believed that China would land humans on the Moon before the United States returned (see “Defending Constellation”, The Space Review, February 4, 2008). After Griffin discussed his interpretation of Chinese capabilities at a hearing of the House Science and Technology Committee last month, one committee member, Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX), drew parallels to the launch of Sputnik, saying, “I believe personally that we may be in a greater period of challenge today than we were in 1957; we just don’t hear the beeps.” One presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), even made a tangential reference to China’s growing capabilities—and a potential loss of American capabilities—in a campaign speech last week in Houston: “I don’t want to be sending Americans into space on a Chinese or Russian manned vehicle.”

On the surface, these concerns are understandable and even reasonable. China has marked a number of major space milestones in recent years, from the launch of its first manned mission, Shenzhou 5, in 2003 to the launch last year of Chang’e-1, its first robotic lunar orbiter. China is also undergoing a dramatic economic revolution that can be called miraculous with little risk of hyperbole, becoming a massive exporter of all varieties of goods and enriching hundreds of millions of Chinese. If China has the ability to transform its society so radically, many argue, there’s little reason to doubt it can become a dominant power in space as well, if the nation’s leaders so desire.

Read the Analysis HERE