NEXT STEP: EXPANDING THE ASTRONAUT CORPS

Soon after Shenzhou 7, China announced that the next step would be the construction of an orbiting space station (Chapter 1). In the meantime, early progress was made on the expansion of the corps of yuhangyuan, necessary to serve the set of missions planned for the 2010 decade. For the first time, women were included. Selection began in May 2009 with 500, shortlisted to 30 men and 15 women. They were reduced to 15 who went for screening in the astronaut training center in October 2009. On 10th March 2010, the final selection of five men and two women was completed. The age group was 30-35, with an average of 32.5.

The recruitment of the first female astronauts went through a number of evolutions. The first move to include women came when, after the flight of Yang Liwei, Gu Xiulian, head of the women’s federation of China, demanded that a woman now be sent into space. The obvious place to look was among women pilots in the PLA Air Force. Here, China had recruited groups of women pilots ever since 1949, with subsequent intakes in 1957, 1965, 1973, 1981, 1989, and 1997, each being called a “generation” (first, second, third, etc.), with the 1997 intake the seventh generation. Generally, they were taken in at age 17-19 and 328 had been recruited by then. The seventh generation comprised 37 cadets, all born in 1978-80, of whom 21 had become transport pilots. The eighth generation was recruited in 2005: candidates studied for more than two years for an aviation degree and then for more than a year in flying, with 16 graduating from this group in 2009. Some of them were lucky enough to be chosen to participate in the fly-past that October to mark the 60th anniversary of the revolution. All would be in their mid-20s for a possible space mission, the same age as Valentina Terreshkova in 1963, who was 26.

For the third selection of astronauts in 2009, women were invited to compete and the age range was lifted to 35. This was an important decision, because it enabled not just the younger women in the eighth generation to compete, but also the older seventh generation. In effect, a decision seems to have been made to open the competition to women with more flying hours, even if they were in transport planes rather than fighters. In addition, the recruiters did not wish training to be interrupted by pregnancy, so they let it be known that they wanted married women who already had their sole child permitted under the Chinese system and also expressed the need for people who were “psychologically mature” (possibly a coded term for “motherhood”). In the event, the average age of the women candidates was 29.5 years.

Two women were chosen. The five men and two women reported for training on 7th May 2010. The finalists were not announced in the Chinese media, but their names turned up because, of all people, the military issued promotional biographies of all its top women pilots, which, coupled with mentions of new astronauts in the local media, made it possible to identify the new group – a detection exercise carried out by space writer Tony Quine. At the 2010 meeting of the Association of Space Explorers, Chinese officials were confronted with the names of the finalists, which they did not contradict. The parents of the new selections were, in no time, giving interviews to Chinese TV. What finally gave the game away was when, on 7th December 2011, a stamp cover was issued in advance of the forthcoming mission with, on it, Yang Waping and Liu Yang.

But who would be selected? Both had strong credentials. Yang Waping appeared to be firm favorite. She was already known for flying in help after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake and for having seeded, from aircraft, clouds that might otherwise have rained on the Beijing Olympics. As for Liu Yang, she came from Zhengzhou in Hainan, where she was born in October 1978. She was described as a quiet studious teenager who surprised everyone when she applied to the Air Force aviation college when she turned 18 in 1997. She was away from home for four years and did not return there for any length of time until she graduated in 2001. Two years later, her plane suffered a bird strike. Pigeon blood spattered the windscreen and one of its engines lost power. Taking the precaution of sending out a mayday message, she managed to make an emergency landing – the kind of calmness under pressure that would appeal to astronaut selectors. Next year, in 2004, she married a fellow military officer, they moved to Wuhan, she was assigned to a squadron of transport planes, and she learned English. When she went for training in Beijing in May 2010, her husband joined her. As we know, she got the nod and the rest is history. The group was comprised as shown in Table 8.6.

Table 8.6. China’s third group of yuhangyuan, 2010.

Zhang Hu Chen Dong Cai Xuzhe Tang Honbo Yi Guangfu Yang Waping Liu Yang

The second selection brought the squad to 21, third in the world, behind the United States (68) and Russia (40) but ahead of Europe and Japan. During the Shenzhou 7 post-flight tour, deputy mission director Zhang Jianqi announced that the next, fourth group would comprise scientists and engineers and would be open to Hong Kong and Macao. Later, applicants from industrial companies would be welcomed [15]. China’s selection of astronauts is summarized in Table 8.7.

CONCLUSIONS: SHENZHOU IN RETROSPECT

This chapter outlined how China became the third manned spacefaring nation in the world. It is a program that had an uncertain start, or, to be more accurate, two starts. Its abortive start in 1971 tells us much of China’s long-term ambitions in space, as well as the peculiar political circumstances of the day. Few would now argue that this project was anything other than premature. The ideal of manned flight was, nevertheless, kept alive in the ground and medical training that continued. The second start to the program in 1989 is intriguing from many points of view. First, the decision to go ahead had a far from clear path, for it was characterized by much uncertainty in the Chinese leadership, even if such debates took place behind closed doors. Second, many of the designs considered, such as spaceplanes, were adventurous and very much geared to long-term objectives. In the end, the most conservative design was followed – one which has clearly worked well (we can only speculate when they might have a spaceplane or shuttle airborne). Third, it is also clear that, even after 1992, the success of the manned program was by no means assured. Attempts were made to cancel it, the designers struggled to meet deadlines, and the first 1999 mission may have been something of a gamble. It was a story of many What ifs? There was nothing inevitable about the Chinese manned space program. The early 1990s saw a consolidation of political structures and leadership in China, with clearly dehneated roles for president and prime minister. The timing of project 921 may have been fortunate, for this may have provided the stability necessary for it to bed in.

As for the program that eventually developed, the most striking feature is its slow but steady pace. Although Western observers might have expected China to have developed its manned space program at the pace seen in the United States and Soviet Union in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this was not the case. The development of the manned program was characterized by considerable caution, with four full unmanned missions (1999, 2001, two in 2002) before a single pilot was put on board for a short mission (2003). Even then, the pace of the program was slow, with two years elapsing before the next flight (2005), another three before the space walk mission (2008), and a further four before the first flight to the space station (2012). The slow, cautious pace was rewarded with comparatively incident-free missions. The approach has also been purposeful and economic, each manned mission representing a substantial step forward, with very little repetition of earlier achievements. Each one, though, ticked off all the key requirements necessary for the construction of a space station.

The program demonstrated a judicious combination of indigenous development with external know-how, Shenzhou itself being the prime example. The Chinese permitted themselves to learn from, rather than copy, the Soyuz system, but they chose to buy in Russian expertise where not doing so might well have delayed their progress, such as with spacesuits, environmental control systems, and cosmonaut training. The Chinese by no means allowed themselves to be boxed in by external example, as demonstrated by their use of orbital modules for an independent program, one of the surprises of the Shenzhou program – something which the Russians had never done with their Soyuz orbital module. It gave the Chinese a considerable bonus for each mission and, in the case of Shenzhou 2, 3, and 4, there was a substantial published scientific program. Table 8.8 summarizes the Shenzhou series, including orbital module durations.