Great Leap to Space.(China)

When China first started up a manned space program 11 years ago, the authorities were so keen on keeping a low profile that they didn't even bother to give it a name. Instead, they gave the program a number-- Project 921--and kept a tight lid on every scrap of information. Launch dates, for instance, have been treated like state secrets. Chinese tourists are allowed to visit the launchpad, in the remote Gobi Desert, but never if there's a chance they might actually get a close look at one of the rockets going up. It's not that anybody would bother to spy on the technology, which is decades old. Rather, the secrecy has more to do with the vanity of China's authorities and the inherent risks of rocketry. No matter how proven the technology, there's always a chance that a rocket will blow up on the launchpad, to the great embarrassment of leaders in Beijing.

The first crack in this Great Wall of Secrecy appeared last week. It came from, of all places, a tourist agency. Chinese authorities informed Inner Mongolia's Alashan Tourist Company, which has for years organized launchpad tours for Chinese citizens, that it could take tourists to watch the next spacecraft, the Shenzhou V, ferry the first Chinese astronaut into space. "We're so excited," says manager Yang Chengzhang. "The tourists will be only a few hundred meters away from the Shenzhou V site on launch day." In the process, the tentative launch date--Oct. 15--slipped into the public domain.

The unprecedented advance notice is indicative of the excitement and confidence the program is generating among China's leadership and its citizens. China is now on the verge of joining that elite club of nations--currently including only Russia and the United States--that have mustered the technology and the political will to send their citizens into outer space. The achievement is rich in symbolic value. If the mission succeeds, China's leaders are hoping that it will cement Beijing's stature as a regional superpower--at the expense of Japan and India, which also have ambitions in space. It would also stand in marked contrast to the stumbling efforts of NASA and the International Space Station, which are plagued by the shuttle disaster and budget crises.

Over the next few decades, a successful manned space program could also begin to yield practical benefits: mainly advances in military technology, such as satellite intelligence gathering and missile defense. China's manned space efforts "almost certainly will contribute to improved military space systems in the 2010-2020 time frame," said a U.S. military report last July. It went on to quote a Chinese naval captain, Shen Zhongchang: "The mastery of outer space will be a requisite for military victory."

The lead-up to Shenzhou V isn't all such bluster and confidence, however; there's also plenty of ambivalence. There are a thousand ways that a space program--or this week's launch, for that matter--can go wrong. A few spectacular satellite launch failures in the '90s killed an ...