Far Space Goals
Assuming that the new booster does become available by the end of the decade – and the Chinese space engineers have an enviable track record of successfully developing new hardware, even if not quite as quickly as first planned – it will have numerous useful missions. First and foremost, it is supposed to allow the launch of heavy communications satellites that China can sell to foreign customers, restoring a cash flow cut off in the late 1990’s when US trade restrictions strangled China’s commercial space launch business.
But early in the next decade, as China also operates its own small space station using Shenzhou transport spacecraft – and perhaps visits the International Space Station from time to time – attention will also turn to more distant goals. With a stronger heat shield, and strapped to a Long March 5-500 booster, a Shenzhou spacecraft could easily loop out around the Moon and back as a demonstration of China’s technical skills.
Such demonstrations serve as credibility enhancers for all of China’s high technology, including commercial exports, scientific status, diplomatic influence, and military power. And it’s not just ‘public opinion’ – Chinese experts make it clear that responding to challenging space goals forces them to develop more sophisticated industrial capabilities.
This ‘super-Shenzhou’ and its new booster could not land on the Moon – an entirely new and expensive spacecraft would be needed for that. Instead, the vehicle could range elsewhere in Earth-Moon space, including a series of gravitational ‘neutral points’ that offer interesting vantage points for observation and jumping-off points for more distant travel.
By far the most interesting is the so-called “Sun-Earth Lagrange Point #2”, which lies about a million miles from Earth, out away from the Sun. That’s four times the distance of the Moon, at the edge of interplanetary space, where spacecraft could metaphorically ride the gravitational wake of Earth as it circles the Sun. An entire fleet of astronomical observatories – including the Webb Space Telescope to replace Hubble – is being assembled to operate from exactly this area of space.
This region is also near the apex of Earth’s long shadow, where instruments could observe the full circle of Earth’s atmosphere back-lit by sunlight to provide unique diagnostics of climate and weather. Earth out the spacecraft window would be as small as the moon looks in the skies of Earth.
After launch from Earth orbit, it would take about two weeks to drift out to this region, and a rocket firing is needed to stop there for as long as was needed. Perhaps a satellite would be deployed, or another one be repaired. After a few days or a few weeks, another rocket firing sends the spacecraft back towards Earth. The total rocket force needed is only slightly greater than that required to circle the Moon and return to Earth, but the big difference is in the mission duration.
The Space Gateway
This area is also sometimes called a “gateway zone”, because it’s a good place to park pieces of a bigger spacecraft – requiring additional launches from Earth – that could then dive back towards Earth to pick up speed and fire its engines to hurl it out into interplanetary space, perhaps to meet a passing asteroid for several weeks of study. Flight paths for such missions, lasting six to twelve months and still requiring less total rocket power than landing on the Moon, have already been developed.
Rationale for human asteroid missions is compelling. First is the great scientific interest in such objects, remnants of the early solar system. Second is the question of exploitable resources, perhaps water ice or even structural materials. Third is the issue of ‘threat mitigation’, studying the cohesiveness of such objects against the future day when Earth needs to push one off a collision course. And fourth is the psychological breakthrough into interplanetary flight and the testing of men and machines to allow serious planning for expeditions to Mars.
The zone is also a gateway into orbits of possible military interest. From here, small automated ‘parasite satellites’ could be dropped into the orbital planes of high-altitude US defense satellites on communications, reconnaissance, and navigation missions. Undetected from Earth, they could nudge themselves onto matching paths, creep up to their targets, and attach to them for later exploitation.
How Likely Is This Scenario?
China has so far expressed no public interest in such missions. For lunar exploration, its news media relies entirely on Chinese specialists quoting from Western studies. But there’s been no mention at all of Western discussions of these alternate goals for manned missions still ten years or more in the future.
