China set to launch U.S.-made satellites.

China set to launch U.S.-made satellites

With the Western world's space programs reeling under a series of launch mishaps that have virtually shut down its means of access to orbit, an American firm has contracted to have a pair of U.S.-built communciations satellites launched by China.

"Money has changed hands," says Henry Schwartz, head of Teresat Inc. in New York, for "launch reservations and a launch agreement" with a Chinese state enterprise called the China Great Wall Industry Corporation. Under the agreement, Chinese Long March 3 rockets -- approximately equivalent to the U.S. Delta rocket -- are scheduled to launch the first satellite in the last quarter of next year, followed by another in the first quarter of 1988.

An official of China Great Wall was quoted by UPI as saying, "China has no intention of competing with Western countries in this field. We contract to do this business in order to make up for the shortage of carrier rockets."

But according to Schwartz, "That's not the position. The position is that they're building a space industry around this."

In fact, Schwartz suggests, the Chinese seem to be a serious competitor. "I believe that they have the facility and the ability to do this," he says. "They certainly have a lunch facility that's modern, and they have modern technology." They have launched 18 satellites of their own so far, he notes, "of which they've had only one failure--their record is very good." In addition, China is reported to be discussing launch possibilities with at least a doxen countries.

"China is trying to operate more in the capitalistic sense as we know it than in the normal business-as-usual [sense'," says Schwartz, "and the group that we dealt with in China, i believe, is the most advanced business and technology group in China today.... The bureaucratic chain of command is much shorter in the Ministry of Astronautics ... than you would normally find in other industrial areas in China."

The two U.S.-built satellites to be launched by China are planned to be the same pair that were carried aloft by the space shuttle in February 1984, but which were retrieved during a later shuttle mission because near-identical malfunctions of their built-in rocket motors left them in the wrong orbits (SN:11/24/84,p.326). Teresat Inc. was formed in March 1985 to buy the satellites (Westar VI and Palapa B) from the insurance underwriters for refurbishment and relaunching.

"i understand," says Schwartz, "that [the U.S.-Chinese launch deal] is the first contract in history that's been signed with a technology float from China out instead of from the Western world in."