China and India Merit ISS Visit Consideration

China and India are both growing Asian space powers with advancing capabilities to orbit payloads, survey the moon and place humans into space (India in 2014) just at the time the American space agency NASA is operating without adequate political support for an expanded domestic human space hardware budget.

The Chinese have already orbited six taikonauts or yuhangyuans in the past few years. India is expected to launch humans to space sometime about 2015. Both China and India seek international recognition of their national techno-capabilities through their human space programs.

The fledgling Chinese and Indian space powers desire access to the International Space Station expected to be finished next year with the last flights of the space shuttles in 2010. Each of the two nations appear willing to pledge much-needed financial support to keep the orbiting laboratory in space for the next several years and involve their respective space flyers.

But the decision to permit utilization by the Chinese and Indian government space programs will be left to the sixteen (16) nation partnership represented by the American National Aeronautics and Space Agency, the Austrian Space Agency, the Belgian Space Agency, the Brazilian Space Agency, the British National Space Center, the Canadian Space Agency, the Danish Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the French Space Agency, the German Aerospace Center / German Space Agency DLR, the Italian Space Agency, the Japanese Space Agency, Netherlands Space Agency, the Norwegian Space Agency, the Russian Space Agency, the Spanish Space Agency, and the Swedish Space Agency. The collective wisdom of the multinational space effort must sort-out Chinese and Indian participation since the two have the bona fides of spacefaring nations. It needs to be considered sooner rather than later.

Over the past decade, the American political establishment has denied any willingness to enable the Chinese access to the space station for fear of technology transfer while India is seeking readiness to fly human-rated space vehicles. The time has come nontetheless to begin to give serious consideration to the Chinese space flyers visiting the ISS in 2014. While there is reluctance in the West to offer the rising Asian nations access to the $100-billion space station, the Obama Administration should offer the Chinese access to ISS upon the demonstrated willingness for transparency within the Chinese human spaceflight program and despite it being a product of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Chinese transparency may begin in many ways but the first is very apparent: enable American government and non-government delegations to visit the Jiuquan Space Launch Center / human spaceport in the Gobi desert to witness the launches of Project 921-2 and Shenzhou 8, Shenzhou 9 in 2011 and human-rated Shenzhou 10.

If the Chinese government 'net surfers just so happen to read this BLOG, please contact this Blogger to begin the necessary arrangements to enable American witnesses of Project 921-2 launches. From that point, let the People-to-People diplomacy begin!