China offered a rare glimpse of its human spaceflight center on Wednesday, drawing back — if only slightly — the veil of secrecy around China’s ambitions in outer space.
A nine-hour train ride and a four-hour drive from the nearest city, past rusted tanks and scrapped fighter jets that dot the barren desert of Gansu Province, the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is an oasis of verdant lawns and trees.
Foreign journalists got their first view of the huge complex on Wednesday, eerily empty despite being home to 15,000 people.
No rockets or space capsules — or even models of them — were on display.
A sprawling but abandoned mission control and a 312-foot-tall (95-meter-tall) assembly platform were seen briefly, but guides preferred to show off the gigantic swimming pool and an eggplant greenhouse.
The Jiuquan complex, one of the few remaining areas in China still off limits to foreigners, stands in stark contrast to its U.S. counterpart, Johnson Space Center in Houston, which is easily accessible and open to tourists.
Still, the visit was not without highlights.
A space star's dressing room
The tour stopped by a whitewashed-concrete dorm room — home to China’s first man in space, Yang Liwei. The door bears his signature, now protected by a plastic casing.
Other parts of the complex were strictly off limits though. At the entrance to mission control, with its banks of computers and massive video screens, hung a sign that read in English: ”No Visit.”
The center, dubbed “East Wind Space City,” was the launch site last year of China’s first manned spacecraft, Shenzhou 5, which Yang piloted.
“It was spectacular,” offered propaganda official Sun Qingquan, who witnessed the historic launch.
Built in 1958, the Jiuquan complex launched its first satellite in 1970.
China has indicated that its next piloted flight, Shenzhou 6, may have two astronauts aboard.
“After that they will need to send up two Shenzhou capsules to practice docking them with each other in space,” Anthony Curtis, a U.S.-based professor and editor of Space Today Online, told Reuters from the United States.
They could have their own space station by 2020, he said, but putting a man on the moon would be unfeasible.
“Both projects would be very large, expensive, long-term commitments,” Curtis said.
Chinese authorities have talked about a range of space initiatives — including lunar probes, lunar landings and even a manned mission to the moon. One top space official recently suggested putting philosophers and teachers into space.
Officials at the center were mum about China’s future space plans. “You can read about it in the media,” laughed Yun Ning, an official with the space center’s foreign affairs office.
Communist influence
Outside Mission Control, three billboards displayed pictures of Chairman Mao Zedong, late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and former Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin, now chairman of the Central Military Commission.
Jiang and his successor, President Hu Jintao, have both visited the complex, officials said.
While last year’s flight marked China’s entry into an elite group of space powers, the push toward the final frontier must compete for funds and attention with more earthly concerns, such as creating tens of millions of jobs and keeping the economy from faltering.
For the time being, slogans written in huge red characters at the launch pad offer advice to would-be astronauts: ”Passionately love the motherland and make selfless contributions.”
