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Is Chang’e-5 really peace ambassador?|Huang Dong

蘋果日報 2020/12/30 10:34


On the eve of Mao’s 127th birthday, having accomplished the trilogy of the Lunar Exploration Project: orbiting, landing and returning, the reentry module of Chang’e-5 successfully came back to the Earth, which can be deemed a decent full stop put for the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan for the Economic and Social Development. Meanwhile, the lofty sentiments and high aspirations to send the reentry module of manned spacecraft Shenzhou 10 to Shaoshan, the birthplace of Mao, comforting him that he could fly up high in the sky to grasp the moon are realized finally.
No matter how it is shunned, the authoritarian polity cannot do without making the Chang’e-5 Project more or less a mission to flaunt its national power with its cold war mentality and pursuit of vanity, which is manifested in Xi Jinping’s congratulatory message, “For building up a powerful nation of aeronautics, performing deeds of merit again in materializing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, putting space to use for the peace of humankind, driving the building of a community with a shared future for mankind to make a great contribution.” Like other technological projects in China such as 5G and AI, its core political mission is palpable.
Nowadays, just few people know that China used to be one of the three countries that attempted to send human beings up to the moon in the 60s. The trials went on until the aircraft which Lin Biao was on was intercepted in the air and shot down in Mongolia and Mao Zedong gave the air force an overhaul. Regardless of now or then, manned flights are taken care of by the air force. Since the first satellite launched in the 50s, China has been laying emphasis on the importance of peacefully putting space to use. In fact, in terms of the national conditions, peace is just camouflage for experiments on military and military-civilian technologies.
Among the 300 launches of Long March rockets, despite their high transparency as compared with that of China’s military technologies, not even one was revealed as a military mission, yet not even one was directly or indirectly related to military affairs, or the military authorities were entitled to commandeer it for help at any time. Take a look at the backstage where there have been the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, the General Armaments Department, the Equipment Development Department and the Strategic Support Force, one will find it perfectly clear it is the aeronautical model adopted by the USSR at work.

Used for pulverizing and capturing enemies’ satellites

Technologies for military use, military-civilian use, military turned civilian use and civilian turned military use employed by the Chang’e-5 Project are seen everywhere propping up the entire program. For example, the 502nd Research Institute of the Chinese Academy for Space Technology (CAST) has integrated AI into navigation, which can be found in the autonomous positioning, positions fixing, lifting off and automatic butts joining by the automatic lunar-surface sampler. The great capacity for transfer and exchange of remote survey and communications data also makes use of dozens of new and old information technologies, including high-speed broadband data links for military-civilian use, big data processing, blockchain technology and 5G. The multi-chip microwave distance and speed metering sensor in the lander, which weighs 14kg and was researched and produced by Xi’an branch of the CAST, is the key to controlling, guiding and navigating the spacecraft, and its enormous potential for military use cannot be ignored.
The titanium-alloy airtight container for lunar soil produced by the 501st Research Institute of the CAST ensures specimen pollution-free after being sent back to the Earth. The remote butts-joining microwave radar for automatic butts joining, the short-range infrared ray-cum-visible light double-spectrum surveillance camera and the three sets of K-shaped butts-joining structures were researched and produced by Xi’an branch and the 508th Research Institute respectively. Pertaining to essential technologies of space weapons like the killer satellite, these technologies apply to precise approaching, pulverizing and capturing enemies’ satellites.
What’s worth noting most is the look of the reentry module does not seem different from that of the reentry module of Shenzhou spacecraft before the launch and after coming back. When it returned to the atmospheric layer, coming in and out of the periphery of the aerosphere at high speed a lot of times, the method of partial trajectory leap at the second cosmic velocity was tested for the first time in China. To accomplish this, seven kinds of heat-proof materials that can resist the charge and crash of high-speed air current at 2000℃  were used. Such an advanced way of coming back from space conceived by Nazi Germany paved the way for space shuttles, fighter spacecraft, high supersonic speed aircraft and intercontinental ballistic missile warheads, insinuating that a new arduous problem of following and intercepting would be faced by missile defense systems. Thus, it can be seen that Chang’e-5 is not as gorgeous as it is presented by its name, but a mix of angel and devil to which we should not shut our eyes.
(Huang Dong, military commentator)
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