With Space Program, China Sees Military, Economic, Political Gains; China Makes Careful But Large Moves

China sees its space program as an investment, not as an unwelcome budgetary outlay, a panel of experts said at a forum of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank.

For China, its space program provides military, economic and political gains, along with making China a respected major power in the eyes of many nations around the globe, the experts said.

The panel included Dean Cheng, senior Asia analyst with CNA Corp.; Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University; Kevin Pollpeter, China program manager with the Defense Group Inc.; and program moderator John Tkacik, senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation Asian Studies Center.

Panel members contrasted the Chinese willingness to provide hefty support to the Sino space program with the dwindling U.S. space program.

NASA will be unable to send even one astronaut to low Earth orbit for half a decade, from retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2010 to the first manned flight of the Orion- Ares next-generation U.S. spaceship system in 2015.

Too, NASA and contractors face a huge brain drain, as battalions of experienced engineers, physicists and scientists now in their 50s near retirement age. Meanwhile, the average age of Chinese space program professionals is in their mid-30s.

Many observers question whether NASA will be unable to return astronauts to the moon before Chinese taikonauts are planting flags there.

To view the program titled "Pandas In Orbit: China’s Space Challenge," please go to http://www.heritage.org/press/events/ev100808a.cfm on the Web.