China looks forward to cooperating with the United States in the
space field, and expects personnel exchanges between the two sides
will become "normal," a senior aerospace executive said yesterday
in Beijing.
Asked to comment on the National Aeronautic and Space
Administration (NASA) chief Michael Griffin's upcoming trip to
China, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp President
Zhang Qingwei said China had always welcomed such visits.
He said that in January, a bipartisan congressional delegation
visited China,
Delegation member Tom Feeney talked about immediate areas of US
space cooperation with China, and reportedly said that future US
spacecraft should be able to dock at the space station China is
planning.
Griffin said he had accepted an invitation from the China
National Space Administration (CNSA) to visit China for talks on
possible Sino-American space cooperation. The agenda of the trip
has not been announced yet.
"We welcome them (US visitors) to take a look over here," Zhang
told China Daily.
"But personally, I hope the exchanges will become more
reciprocal."
Zhang was referring to the fact that while China's door has been
open to US visitors, Chinese aerospace staff have frequently been
denied visas in recent years.
Most recently, when deputy chief of CNSA Luo Ge visited the US
earlier last month, some members of his delegation were denied
visas, according to Zhang.
Chinese space scientists have sometimes had difficulty in
attending international space conferences held in the United
States, even though the events were not sponsored by the US, Zhang
added.
Zhang said he hoped the situation would change.
NASA chief Griffin was quoted by AFP as saying of his upcoming
China visit: "I think the United States has always benefited from
discussions, I do not see how it can hurt us."
Griffin told a Senate subcommittee on science and space during a
hearing in Washington DC last Tuesday that he was looking forward
to the visit.
Griffin said that the United States needs both good partners and
competitors in space exploration, and sometimes they can be both a
competitor and a partner.
Zhang said as with other countries, China and the United States
can cooperate in areas including deep space exploration, commercial
satellite launches and manned space flights.
"So far as technology is concerned, we will respect each other's
intellectual property rights," he said.
Zhang, also deputy chief commander of China's Manned Space
Program, said that technological innovation has enabled China to
"spend less money but achieve more" in its manned space
program.
The country has earmarked around 20 billion yuan (US$2.47
billion) for its manned space program since it was initiated in
1992, catapulting China into the exclusive space club that three
years ago housed only the former Soviet Union and the United
States.
The spending paled when compared with the cost of the US Appollo
Program, which totaled US$25 billion, spent between 1962 and
1972.
In addition to building ground facilities, half of China's
expenditure has been allocated to the rocket and spacecraft
systems, both of which were developed by Zhang's company, the
Study Times weekly reported this week.
Theoretically, the more tests and trial launches are made, the
higher success rate for both rockets and spacecraft.
With painstaking technological brainstorming, Chinese scientists
have applied 55 new technologies, including innovative solutions
for fault detection and escape systems, on the Long March 2F rocket
the carrier of China's spacecraft, raising its reliability rate
from 91 percent for unmanned launches to 97 percent for manned
missions, Zhang said.
The overall safety rate reached a staggering 99.7 percent, he
said.
Space innovations have been increasingly applied to national
economic development, Zhang said.
Between 1999 and 2005, China successfully launched two manned
and four unmanned space missions atop the Long March 2F
rockets.
(China Daily May 4, 2006)