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May 1, 2023 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

49:54

Edition 721 - UAP Hearings/China In Space

Three guests from a recent tv show. First, Nick Pope on the April 19 Washington USAP Hearing - only the second one of its kind in 50 years. Second, Dr Yu-Dai Tsai from UCAL, Irvine on using asteroids in the hunt for a "fifth force" in Physics. Third, author/researcher Brian Harvey in Ireland on Russia and China's ambitions in space...

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	Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is the Unexplained.
	Thank you for being part of my show.
	Thank you for all the emails.
	Springtime is more or less here in the UK.
	I'm not saying that the sun is blazing or as we say in Liverpool cracking the flags.
	It's not exactly doing that, but it is at least warmer.
	And I think that does indicate that we are inevitably heading in the right direction.
	And for one, I'm saying thank you very much for that.
	Three items from a recent TV show preserved here for posterity on the podcast.
	Number one, Nick Pope talking about the recent Washington UFO UAP hearings with Sean Kirkpatrick and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
	Those hearings, only the second set of hearings of their kind in 50 years.
	So even though the hearings were only 40 minutes long, I think, they were still very significant in a number of ways.
	But did they deliver what a lot of UFO people expected?
	I don't think so, but we'll find out from Nick Pope.
	Second item is a piece of pure science here.
	And you know that I'm not a scientist, so I had to stretch my head around this, but I think it's important.
	Dr. Yu Daitsai, physicist at the University of California, Irvine, talking with me about a news story that I saw about his research and his team's research into using asteroids in the search for a fifth force of nature, which would fundamentally change our knowledge of physics.
	We know of four, but there may be a fifth.
	And he will explain to us why and how they're doing that research into a fifth force of nature.
	That's the second item.
	Third item, slightly longer, is going to be a man who's written extensively about the Russian and in particular the Chinese space programs.
	His name is Brian Harvey, writer and broadcaster on spaceflight, based in Ireland.
	He's written a number of books on these topics, and he is fascinating in the way that he can get us up to speed on particularly the Chinese space program, which seems to be advancing at tremendous pace, bearing in mind they only started, certainly officially, in 2003.
	So Brian Harvey, guest number three.
	Those are the three items.
	Many thanks for your emails.
	Please keep them coming.
	I always look at the emails as they come in, and if your email requires a reply, please put response or reply required in the subject line.
	And if you have an idea or a thought for a guest that we might have on the show, please let me have them too.
	Because I'm doing it all on the own here.
	And, you know, as I say, sometimes, sometimes, although I love doing this, you can probably tell it in my voice, you know, it is a strain to keep it all going one way or another.
	And, you know, I don't expect any sympathy for that because I'm doing something that I love.
	So, you know, no problem there.
	But, you know, all the help I can get is gratefully received, I think, is what I'm saying.
	And on that subject, if you've made a donation recently for the online version of the show, thank you very much for doing that.
	Thank you to Adam, my webmaster, as ever, for his ongoing hard work.
	All right, I'm not going to say any more now because I've said enough.
	First of all, then, guest number one on this edition of The Unexplained, Nick Pope, independent researcher on all things anomalous and former MOD UFO man, about the UFO UAP hearings recently in Washington.
	The news release that went around it basically alerted us, the media, to the fact that on Wednesday, the 19th of April at 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time, the director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, RO, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, appears before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, chaired by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
	New York Post reported it this way.
	The Pentagon released a newly declassified video of a UFO soaring above the Middle East last year during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
	The footage captured by a U.S. military drone shows a mysterious spherical object zooming across the sky above an active military zone.
	Point one.
	Point two, CNN put it this way.
	The U.S. government is tracking more than 650 potential cases of so-called unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs.
	According to the director of the office, that's Sean Kirkpatrick, the man we mentioned, director of the Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or Arrow.
	Take number three was Fox News.
	Fair and balanced.
	The head of the Pentagon's office, tasked with tracking UFOs, told lawmakers Wednesday of emerging capabilities and advanced tech from potential foreign adversaries, especially Russia and China.
	But there's no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial technology or alien life.
	One set of hearings, 40 minutes in total in Washington last week, at least three different takes on all of that.
	Now, I don't know whether that means it's because there wasn't very much to come out of the hearings and journalists had to do their job, as I've had to do many times.
	You know, you get sent to a place and you get told, find me a story and come back with it.
	Maybe that's part of it.
	Or maybe there is a great big truth in all of this that the media missed.
	Nick Pope will know, former MOD UFO man and independent investigator and star of Ancient Aliens and many other conferences and sessions here.
	Nick, nice to have you on again.
	How are you?
	Yes, good.
	Thank you very much.
	You are Man in a Suitcase still.
	I keep looking at the various advertisings for various events that you're attending.
	What's the next one?
	We have four more Ancient Aliens Live events this coming week.
	Charlotte, Virginia Beach, Tysons and Red Bank.
	Gee, so you're going to have to do a bit of traveling?
	Absolutely.
	Man in a suitcase, Nick.
	I'm very envious.
	40-minute hearing this week, which is not a lot.
	And at the end of it, we were told we may never know what these things are.
	There are some people who might be disappointed by that.
	What do you say?
	Well, I think it was a mixed bag.
	Obviously, what we don't know is what happened in the classified briefing that came immediately before the unclassified public hearing.
	So that's one point to ponder.
	I think Dr. Kirkpatrick played a very skillful game.
	And what he was doing, what the briefing was designed to do, I think, with my old MOD hat on, is a little bit of expectation management for Congress and the media.
	And he was saying, look, I know you want us to go back to 1945 and tell us everything that you've done, everything you've found out, but that's a big job.
	Our focus must be on the more recent cases that may pose a current threat.
	And that's got to be where we prioritize.
	One of the things that came out of it, certainly one of the commentaries on it that I heard during the week from an American network, basically raised the question of presumably what they're going to be doing is looking at the cases that they've been able to identify and putting those up against the ones that they can't identify and then seeing if there are similarities.
	Is that process happening?
	Yes, it is.
	But again, Dr. Kirkpatrick was quick to say, look, we're only just gearing up to do this.
	Arrow is still a relatively young organization.
	There are questions about resources, which is, of course, one of the things, one of the reasons behind this hearing last week.
	Do they have enough manpower and financial resources to do the job and access to the other resources?
	That was a big point, by the way.
	Congress was saying, look, are you getting all the access you need, specifically to some of the really highly classified intelligence data?
	And it wasn't clear.
	So Congress said, we will work with you on that.
	And if you need access, we will help you get it.
	So that was important.
	One of the commentators that I heard this week, and I'm sure you heard this analysis too, basically said, there are no secrets here.
	This is not something that is being hidden from the people.
	You know, here we have transparency at the very least.
	Do you buy that?
	Well, I think it goes back to what you said in your introduction, that you get these different takes on it.
	And it wasn't clear.
	I think a lot of the media were thinking, is this briefing about Chinese spy balloons?
	Is it about the extraterrestrial hypothesis?
	Or is it covering all of that?
	And it is covering all of that.
	But your belief system as a journalist covering this story, I think, plays a part in the coverage that comes out the other end.
	As we saw in those varied stories and the way that they've been spun.
	I mean, for Fox News, I don't think surprisingly it's enemies foreign and domestic.
	Enemies foreign, certainly, is the spin that's put on that and no evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
	And for the others, there are differing views.
	The very best we can get out of it is a remaining mystery.
	Now, I had Steve Bassett, who you'll know very well because you've been on those panels and shows with him many times.
	I've known Steve a long time too.
	He was telling me that he believes that we could be within months of some kind of disclosure.
	On the basis of those 40 minutes, and whatever Sean Kirkpatrick may have said, and whatever transparency, which I don't doubt there was, there may have been.
	Do you think there's any possibility that that may come true?
	I think that's a little optimistic, though, of course, one can never rule it out because you don't know what's going to suddenly and unexpectedly be revealed.
	One of the interesting things that did emerge at the hearing is this admission that so far, and we've discussed how this is mandated under the new defense bill, this whistleblower provision, it was revealed that over two dozen people had already come forward to testify.
	What we don't yet know is who are those people?
	Are they the real deal, people who've genuinely been involved in classified programs on this?
	Or is it just somebody in the military who's seen a UFO, but it's just an unverified story?
	I think Dr. Kirkpatrick sounded a little exasperated with Congress on that point, which leads me to suggest it's not perhaps disclosure.
	And he did issue a plea and say, look, when you send these people to us, please prioritize them.
	So I think that's something to watch.
	It is.
	Are you worried, Nick?
	Are you concerned?
	Maybe not worried, but are you concerned that this issue, because of the fact that we didn't get a great smoking gun and we didn't get great revelations at this Senate hearings, this 40 minutes, are you concerned this issue is going to go off the boil again?
	I think it might.
	And the more people put things like spy balloons into the conversation, the less the more exotic possibilities get discussed.
	And so I think that's a shame.
	But we'll have to see where the data take us.
	Of course, NASA are doing their own study in parallel.
	That's something else to watch.
	And it won't be too long before we have some of the other reports that are due under the existing legislation.
	So I think Steve Bassett's optimistic with his time scale.
	And I don't know that there is something, a smoking gun to disclose.
	But we will, over the next few months, whichever way the data point, we will have more of those data.
	And that's exciting.
	It is.
	And the fact that NASA are on the case, when we've got a director of NASA now, Mr. Nelson, who actually swore an oath, didn't he, this last week?
	Not on a Bible, but I think on a Carl Sagan book.
	Yes.
	And of course, Bill Nelson, before he headed up NASA, he sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and we know that he's had the classified briefing on UAP.
	So given that he's had that briefing, and he sounds so enthusiastic sometimes about some of the more exotic possibilities concerning extraterrestrials, that is interesting for sure.
	Any stories that I might have missed, Nick, that you know about at the moment?
	Well, I mean, obviously he showed that Sean Kirkpatrick showed the video of this object from the Middle East.
	This is film footage from 2022.
	Sometimes with my old MOD hat on, my conspiracy theory side says that he was deliberately maybe trying to show something that even though it's technically unexplained, he's maybe got a strong idea that it's just something mundane, like a radar targeting balloon or something.
	But the fact that it was shown has obviously generated a lot of media coverage.
	And there's more footage like that out there.
	And one of the big pressures from some of the congressional representatives is show us the rest of the photos and the videos that we know you've got.
	And again, that's something to watch.
	And show us the stuff that you confiscated or took away.
	Confiscated is a loaded word, a pejorative term, from the USS Nimitz.
	You know, it'd be nice to see some of that stuff that was taken away, flown away, and secreted.
	Nick, always good to speak with you.
	Safe travels.
	Nick Pope, we'll see what happens next, as they say.
	Now, a pure science subject, the search for, using asteroids, a fifth force of nature.
	It is a fascinating and fundamental piece of research.
	The man I spoke with about this on the TV show, he was very good to give me his time, is Dr. Yu Dai Tsai, physicist at the University of California, Irvine.
	Vice.com reported this.
	Scientists hope to search for a, quote, fifth force that might exist beyond our current model of the universe by examining the minute movements of asteroids in our solar system, according to a new study.
	This novel approach could expose hidden ultralight particles that might shed light on some of the biggest mysteries of the universe, like the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
	Our reality is governed by at least four fundamental forces.
	They are gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.
	But scientists have long suspected that forces might exist outside what's known as the standard model of particle physics, which is a robust theory that describes elementary particles and forces in the universe.
	In other words, we know about four things, but like a lot of our understanding of life, the world, and everything, there may be something that we've missed.
	Let's get on a man who's been heading up this project, Dr. Yu Tai Tsai, physicist at the University of California, Irvine, USA.
	Thank you very much for coming on.
	Hello, nice to see you.
	Nice to see you.
	May I call you Dr. Yu?
	Tsai will be Dr. Tsai will be Dr. Tai's fan.
	Dr. Tai, this is fascinating.
	A fifth force.
	Is it the kind of thing that you only suspect might be there because of the effect it appears to be having on other things in the cosmos?
	Yes, I think that's a correct way to describe it.
	So we already know the standard model have four forces.
	And recently we actually found Higgs particle, which can mediate a new force that you can also call your fifth force, but it's shorter range.
	Now, it's long been speculated, as you say, that there are new forces that are motivated by dark matter or dark energy that can affect this astrologer motion or planetary motion or tiny things like torsion balance, these kind of experiments.
	So we have been searching for it.
	And so far, we haven't found it, but there is a lot of interesting effort into doing that.
	And you're using asteroids to do this.
	Why are you investigating this possibility?
	Why is it important?
	Yeah, so from the fundamental physics point of view, all these theories are unexplained.
	Like, sorry, all this mystery, like dark matter and dark energy, are things that we want to explain, we want to understand, but we haven't been able to.
	So this feed force can be a key to unlock these mysteries.
	On the other hand, we already have all these asteroidal data collected, and we have space mission like OSIRIS-REx that is tracking this asteroid venue very precisely.
	So we have huge amount of data and very precise data of these asteroids.
	And people haven't really done a large-scale analysis of all this data to unveil the potential fifth force.
	So that's why I'm very interested in investigating this data and to understand fifth force and maybe other fundamental topics like gravity and dark matter.
	And if we discover there is one, how useful will that knowledge be to us?
	What will we do with it?
	So it will revolutionize our understanding of particle physics and cosmology, needless to say.
	But also, this is analogous to what we are understanding of the general relativity.
	So before we find general relativity, there is anomalous precession of the Mercury that cannot be explained.
	And it's perfectly and beautifully explained by general relativity from Einstein.
	So if we actually find some new force that could have an effect on asteroids and planets, we have to take them into account because all of this asteroidal tracking is crucial for our survival.
	So we need to know when and how this asteroid could hit us.
	And that's part of the mission of the OSIRIS-REx and the mission.
	So this would be important.
	Of course, the effects of this fifth burst will be very tiny.
	I doubt it would ever affect our human life, but who knows, right?
	And so it's worth investigating.
	Right.
	So the immediate benefit, I get it.
	The immediate benefit of knowing more about this will be to help us to project where asteroids are coming from, how fast they're coming from, and precisely what direction they're coming in.
	We need to know that because we know we live in a cosmic shooting gallery, and one of these days, one of them is going to be heading right this way.
	Yeah.
	But I would say that, again, the chance of this fit force affecting this is very tiny.
	But when you investigate this data, you will also find an expected thing.
	Actually, we have been looking into a lot of this data and a lot of these asteroids we found are not, they actually have extra activity.
	So they have weird motion.
	Of course, this is most likely not from the fit force.
	Most likely we have some physics that we don't fully understand.
	So they have anomalous motion.
	Nevertheless, when we investigate things systematically and carefully, we will be able to identify why does this asteroid behave weirdly, and we will be able to distinguish that from the actual fit force, from the fundamental physics.
	How long is this research going to take?
	We have actually made progress year by year.
	So the first in this VICE news report, it's actually a report of A result from two years ago.
	And now we're actually doing, we actually already done an analysis with OSIRIS-REx data for local dark matter density.
	And now we're doing the fifth-fourth in a more careful sense.
	So I think every year we'll have great progress.
	And now I'm working with the NASA experts and also astronomer to try to investigate a huge amount of data.
	So I would say that a proper analysis would probably take one to two years, but it's not fundamentally difficult.
	We just have to overcome the technical issue like how to refit all the parameter, how to take into account all of these perturbations from non-physics.
	But these are also again important to our survival.
	So analyzing this would not be a waste of taxpayers' money because these are important for our survival.
	Every so often I get the chance to talk to somebody who's at the cutting edge of science in whatever field it might be.
	I've just spoken to one of those people.
	Thank you so much for giving me your time on a Sunday.
	Thank you.
	Thanks a lot.
	Thank you for the conversation.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Dr. Yu Daitsai, physicist at the University of California, Irvine.
	And, you know, even if the only benefit we get, and it's a sizable benefit, is helping us to predict what's coming this way, then that's going to be a great thing.
	And that's the starting point.
	Who knows what else we may discover?
	Dr. Yu Daitsai, some fascinating research, bit of a stretch of the mind for people who are non-scientific.
	You know, you've got to really listen.
	But wow, how amazing.
	He's a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, and my thanks to him for giving me his time.
	Last on this edition of The Unexplained from my TV show, Brian Harvey, writer on matters of space and many other things.
	He's based in Ireland.
	And we're going to talk about the Russian and in particular the Chinese space programs and where they're at in 2023.
	Brian Harvey is a writer and broadcaster on spaceflight, lives in Ireland and is a long-standing member of the British Interplanetary Society and a contributor to the annual Soviet China Forum, Spaceflight and Space Chronicle.
	He's written a number of histories of the Chinese space program, most recently China in Space, The Great Leap, 2019 that was, which was also published in Chinese.
	In the course of its preparation, he met China's first man in space, Yang Lui, and the first woman, Liu Yang.
	His most recent book, just published, is European-Russian Cooperation in Space, from Daga to Exo-Mars.
	Brian Harvey is online to us now.
	Brian, thank you very much for doing this with us tonight.
	Good evening.
	So why do you think that America is no longer the only truly major power in space?
	Why are the Chinese and the Russians both coming up?
	The Chinese in particular?
	There are three space superpowers.
	Space superpower is defined by a country able to put its own astronauts or cosmonauts, or as the Chinese call them, Hang Tianyuan, into orbit.
	The first country to do so was the Soviet Union way back in 1961.
	The second was the United States in 1962.
	And then China in 2003 became the third superpower.
	And it's quite interesting that at the moment there are two space stations permanently occupied circling the Earth.
	The best known is the International Space Station, which is run by Russia with the United States, also involving Europe, Canada and Japan.
	But the other one, which is not so well known, is called the Tiangong, and that has a permanent crew of three Chinese Hang Qianyuan on board.
	It's also interesting that the International Space Station is due to conclude its mission in 2031.
	But the Chinese space station will keep on flying, I would imagine, well into the 2040s.
	So at the moment, we're in a situation where there are six Russians, Americans and others in orbit on the ISS, and then a further three on the Chinese space station orbiting the Earth right now.
	There was some talk, and I think this has melted away, it dematerialized, but there was some talk of a cooperation, a pact between Russia and China in space.
	I don't think that ever came about fully.
	What has happened is there has been a trend towards a very bipolar space world in the past number of years.
	We have to remember that way back in 1949, the United States sanctioned both Russia and China and said no high-tech industries or high technology can be exported to both, to either of them.
	In 1991, that changed with the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Russian Federation.
	Not long afterwards, what was considered quite improbable at the time, a joint space station project, which we now know as the International Space Station.
	However, China remains isolated from this process by the United States, which is China has gone its own way.
	With the exception of the International Space Station, though, Russia seems to be largely operating on its own.
	So the combined forces of the other countries have, in effect, begun to push China and Russia together.
	And they have signed an agreement for what's called the International Lunar Research Station, which they are committed to setting up at the end of the 2020s, this decade, shortly after the Americans are due to return their astronauts to the moon on what's called the Artemis program.
	What will that mean for America?
	What does it mean for America?
	The Americans see China as quite a threat to them, and the word threat and China have never been very far apart.
	If you look at launch rates per year, China has reached about 60 rocket launchings per year.
	The Americans are still ahead.
	I think we have to remember that the American space budget is enormous compared to all other countries.
	The Americans spend at least 35 billion.
	I'm going to use the word Euros on that, but they're roughly Translatable into dollars at current rates of spending.
	The United States spends more on space than all the other countries of the world put together.
	If we say that the US is on 35 billion, Europe is on 12 billion, China on only five, Russia on four, Japan on just over two, and India on one.
	So I think that gives you an idea of the enormous size of the American space program compared to the others and why the idea of a Chinese quote threat as it's presented is, I suspect, more imagined than real.
	We also have to remember that although the Americans are best known for the Apollo program to land on the moon and for the space station, it is also the case that the Americans have effectively and very wonderfully conquered the solar system in terms of all their unmanned spacecraft that have gone to Mercury, to Mars.
	Only last week, a new one gone to Jupiter.
	They've been to Uranus, Neptune, and the two Voyager probes have even left the solar system and are on their way to the stars.
	So in terms of robotic space exploration, the Americans are the masters of the universe, as it were, and other countries are not yet able to compete, although the Chinese have ambitions to do so.
	Russia's main achievements have really been in space stations.
	From 1971, Russia launched the first space station called Salute.
	And on that space station, their cosmonauts spent ever longer times, three months, then six months.
	One person has spent 438 days, Valerni Polyakov.
	And if you look at the list of the most traveled space travelers, you're going to meet many Russian names on the list before you meet any American names.
	This is probably the dumbest question I've asked all night, but here it comes.
	Why do these nations, we know that they're important powers, why do they want to be involved in space?
	What is in it for them?
	We think specifically about Russia and China.
	Is it all about prestige?
	Is it more politics than science?
	Why?
	There are many different reasons.
	I mean, first of all, I think we have to say space science is important in terms of finding out about the sun, how it behaves, where radiation comes from, discovering about the stars, as, for example, the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble before that have done and sent back these wonderful images of distant universes and so on.
	A second one is for Earth observations.
	A lot of our best information on the nature of the soil, the seas, the land, the weather now comes from space satellites.
	Television is relayed internationally around the world by communication satellites.
	That didn't happen 60 years ago.
	If you wanted a news report from another country, you had to wait for a film cassette to be delivered by an airplane about 24 hours later.
	So there are many practical aspects of space exploration that I think we take very much for granted.
	However, I think your opening point is a very important one.
	Many people do see space exploration as enhancing their country and their country's reputation.
	You could call that prestige if you wish.
	And it's also the case, I think, particularly if you look at the space programs of the Soviet Union, China.
	They see them as an instrument of the modernization of their countries.
	Their countries were when they began their space station, space programs, the Soviet Union after the Second World War, China in 1956, technologically far behind European and American countries, although that was due to many politics, colonialization and so on.
	So they saw the space program as an instrument whereby they might catch up through their technology.
	It's seen as a force of modernization in their country.
	And if you look at China in particular, their communication system, their navigation systems were very much modernized through the use of communication satellites, which was why it was one of the early top objectives of their program.
	Do you think that China has got, I mean, China has many secrets, we know that.
	By definition, it's, you know, a state that is very compacted and very closed in many ways.
	Do you think that China might actually, and might it be the Americans' fear, be developing technology that is perhaps in advance of what America's got?
	I mean, we marvel at where America's going.
	As you say, all those past achievements and the Voyagers on their way out of the solar system and all of the rest of it, amazing stuff.
	But do you think that maybe China has got a number of ACEs up its sleeve and is going to do something truly amazing quite soon that will upstage the US?
	There are some ways in which China has already demonstrated that it has some quite advanced technology.
	China, after all, is the only country to have landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon.
	No other country has attempted to do that.
	And China has done a number of aspects of space technology, quantum communications, which are a much better way of transmitting information across long distances.
	That's something other countries haven't done.
	I think it's also worth saying that the Chinese space program is not particularly secretive compared to other countries.
	Most countries have what they call politely classified programs.
	It is the case that I would calculate about 20% or so of the Chinese space program is devoted to what may be called military satellites, which are observation satellites, either through optical equipment, photography, or else electronic intelligence or else radar.
	But that is still very small compared to the American investment in this area.
	So China is interested to develop advanced technology as much as it can.
	The Chinese have talked only yesterday because tomorrow is actually China National Space Day, but they're talking only yesterday about sending spacecraft to interstellar destinations, and those spacecraft are already in design.
	I think if we're imagining that they have something deep in their back pocket about which we know nothing, I think that's highly speculative.
	I don't think that's the case.
	But they've done amazing things.
	As you said at the beginning of this, they only started 20 years ago, 2003.
	And they've gone this far.
	I believe in the last week or so that they did a spacewalk, which is very much the kind of thing you associate with the ISS, but they're doing that.
	They are doing that.
	And now that they have their permanently manned space station in Earth orbit, their next step is to send a mission to the asteroids, but other countries have done that already.
	They would like to get Mars samples back to Earth.
	And the current schedule is that they would expect to get their Mars samples back to Earth around 2031, which is about two years ahead of the United States combined with Europe.
	The other thing is that the Chinese are interested to send a human crew to the moon.
	But again, the Chinese will stress to everybody that they're not in a race to do so.
	They're going to do so in their own good time.
	They're not racing anyone.
	They see it as part of the process of China catching up and then eventually moving ahead.
	China did declare in 2008 that it wanted to be the most technologically advanced country in the world.
	That was clearly stated as an objective.
	And the space program would be a particular vehicle for doing that.
	And pretty well everything that they said they would do in 2008 so far, according to their timetable, they have done.
	So it is a very steady progress, but it's also a very open progress.
	They also committed, for example, to having more scientific papers published in China than any other country in the world by 2050.
	There's a problem about that target, which is they actually overtook it in 2020.
	So you're seeing some very, very rapid progress.
	The Chinese themselves, they said, they would like you to make a news broadcast and to say there's just been a very major scientific discovery and now over to our reporter in Beijing.
	That's what they would like.
	They would like the words made in China to be replaced by invented in China.
	So technological development is a very important part of Chinese development, but I would also say no less so than European countries, North American countries and others.
	We mustn't forget, of course, the wonderful work that's being done at the moment by the European Space Agency.
	You know, I tended to leave them out of this when we're talking about Russia, China, and the US, but ESA is doing great work too.
	Brian Harvey is here.
	He's a writer and broadcaster on space flight based in Ireland.
	Kind enough to give his time to us tonight.
	We're talking about China and Russia in space.
	And talking about both of them, Brian, how much of what they both do, and China perhaps in particular, but also Russia, how much of the space development that they're involved in is military?
	The proportion, I suspect, is a lot less than it's often portrayed to be.
	One thing I took a look at was in the case of China's program, could we get some kind of objective measurement of the degree to which its program has a military component?
	And the answer is about 20, 21%.
	And I base that on satellites on which subsequent scientific reports were not issued.
	In other words, if we don't get a scientific report after a particular mission, because we do for the others, we may presume that they're not going to tell us military outcomes.
	So you get about 20%.
	With Russia, most of its space effort is put into the International Space Station, with at least two Soyuz piloted launches to the space station every year and two sometimes more Progress unmanned cargo freighter spacecraft sent up to it.
	In addition, the Russians keep going their fleet of navigation satellites, what we would call GPS, what they call GLONAS, Earth observation satellites called Resource.
	They have a relatively small scientific program, but the Russians will be returning to the moon this year on the 13th of July with a spacecraft called Luna 25.
	This leaves the Russians with quite a small fleet of Earth observation spacecraft for optical and radar reconnaissance.
	At one stage early this century, those missions almost disappeared from the manifest, but now a number of them are being put back into space so that there is a similar component of the Russian space program that has military objectives.
	I think it's worth pointing out, though, if you look at the budget request in the United States for the year 2024, NASA's budget request is for 27 billion euros, but the United States Space Force budget request is for 30 billion, which will give you an idea of the very substantial scale of investment by the United States in both civilian, but more so in military space programs.
	And those are not put under a lot of media attention.
	In fact, the question that you've asked me, I'm frequently asked about Russian and Chinese investment in military-based space enterprises, but hardly ever on the American ones.
	As you say, America's making substantial investments in those things.
	Do you think that there is a possibility, bearing in mind that all the three nations that we're talking about are invested in military applications of space technology?
	Is it all about surveillance?
	Is it principally about surveillance?
	Or is some of this more hostile in terms of the technology we've read about of taking out satellites, which we all depend on?
	Or maybe even more than that?
	Maybe, you know, beams zapping us down here from up there?
	Most of it is about surveillance.
	In fact, our planet is extremely well surveilled from a military point of view.
	And you will see that a lot for a moment in the current war in Ukraine.
	If you look at one of the countries that calls Western nations a lot of concern is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea, we call it, and the North Korean Cosmodrome at Sohai, I suspect, is one of the most observed single locations on the entire planet.
	So that electronic and visual and radar surveillance is probably would absorb most of the military space programs of the world.
	There have been some interceptor type satellites developed.
	The first, I believe, was Prowler, which was an interceptor satellite developed by in one of the classified secret American space shuttle missions.
	The Chinese have been also supposed to have been developing interceptor spacecraft.
	We know the Russians have an active space interceptor program at the moment.
	They also have a satellite called Luch-Olymp, which travels in 24 orbit, we are told, listening in to the communications of communication satellites at that altitude.
	In the 1970s, the Russians tested a system for intercepting other satellites and blowing them up.
	But that has discontinued, thankfully, both from a military point of view and from a debris point of view.
	But they could do that again should they wish to do so.
	The idea of shooting satellites down actually goes back to 1958.
	It was an American project, and the Americans also put billions of needles into orbit around the Earth in order to be able to carry on military communications in the event of a nuclear war.
	So unfortunately, the militarization of space goes back to the 1950s.
	Indeed, you can say it goes back to the 1940s because the first rocket used in anger was indeed the German A-4, better known in Britain as the V-2, which was launched from bases in France and the Netherlands against London, Belgium, and France in the Second World War.
	So there has always been a connection, which I think space enthusiasts very much regret, with the military.
	I think the point I would make again is that the military space programs of the superpowers is a relatively small part of what most of them do.
	But nevertheless, it is a part of the overall montage of it.
	China got a lot of criticism, I think, two years ago it is now.
	Maybe it's one year, but I think it's two years ago.
	When one of its satellites went out of control, an old satellite, didn't it?
	And China was criticized because of the haphazard way this thing, its descent, was handled and that bits of it could have ended up anywhere.
	In the end, I think it all ended up safely in the ocean.
	Are China being a bit more circumspect about the way that they are maintaining those things that they have up in space?
	The answer is yes, but there is a long history of objects falling out of space and threatening our planet.
	The biggest early threat was the Americans, first ever American space station, Skylab, which crashed down into the Australian outback in 1979.
	And thought had not been given at that time to how can we safely deorbit it.
	That changed, and for example, the Americans appointed in NASA an office for space debris or debris mitigation, as it's sometimes called.
	So the space powers began to get a lot more serious about what do we do about space debris.
	And for example, one of the initial things to do was very simple.
	They stopped painting their rockets because paint flakes in orbit come off and they then become debris.
	So that's just a small thing that helped.
	Most countries now have systems in place whereby once a rocket has delivered its satellite into orbit, that the top upper stage is then deorbited safely back into the atmosphere in such a way that it will certainly burn up.
	A particular problem that has arisen here for which China attracted a lot of negative attention was that the debris mitigation measures have generally come in only in the past 10, 15, maybe even 20 years.
	And the largest Chinese launcher called the Long March 5 was not designed in such a way that its upper stage could be safely brought back.
	There are quite a number of more Long March 5 launches scheduled.
	So this will remain a problem.
	I'm not quite sure how they're going to be able to deal with that.
	But I think it's worth saying that this is an issue that affects all countries.
	And although China has attracted much the most criticism for it, no country, I think we can say, has a clean sheet on this particular issue.
	No, I get that impression.
	China and Russia, do they both have plans to go to Mars?
	The Chinese certainly, so far as we can know, would intend to do so.
	And in their program for space exploration put forward in 2008, they certainly expressed the desire to have humans on Mars.
	And they penciled in the 2040s as the likely time when they might be able to do that.
	And as I said earlier, let's remember they have been ticking off their lists one by one of all the things they set themselves in their 2008 program.
	So I think the Chinese do intend eventually to send humans to Mars.
	The fact of having a space station in Earth orbit means you can build up the expertise and knowledge of how do you live for long periods.
	Because if you go to Mars, you're going to take nine or ten months to travel there.
	You're going to spend at least a month on the surface.
	If you're going to come back for the next launch window, for the following one, you're going to spend two years on the surface.
	So Russia needs to build up its expertise in long-duration space travel.
	The Russians already have such expertise.
	The Chinese, it seems, are more likely to have the resources and the ability to carry out such a mission than the Russians.
	But as I've mentioned earlier, Russia and China do plan to set up The lunar base, the International Lunar Research Station, later in the 2020s, this decade.
	But they stress they are not in a race against the United States to do that.
	They will do so in their own good time.
	And let us remember: we have a parallel here, which is Antarctic exploration.
	I was just going to say.
	Yes, the Antarctic was left alone very much after Amundsen and Scott and Shackleton went there in the period before the First World War.
	And the main technologically advanced countries of the world did not return there until after the Second World War.
	And they set up many bases there.
	There's been Russian bases, American bases, the European bases, Concordia, British bases, and so on.
	So the idea that there should be multiple and cooperative bases, be they on the moon or on Mars, is very much echoing our earlier experience of Antarctic exploration.
	And that exploration was carried out in a relatively cooperative way between the countries.
	They've not got into arguments once they got there.
	It's all been done for science.
	There's been a relatively benign atmosphere of cooperation around doing that, both in different groups and countries and doing them together.
	And hopefully the pattern of Antarctica will repeat itself on the moon and on Mars.
	Well, yes, but I guess if they find minerals or something very, very useful up there, that might add a little incentive to there being some competition.
	But we can't know how it will develop, but it will be nice to think that on Mars, on the moon, there will be less competition and more cooperation, because that furthers all of it.
	Which brings us to the very last point.
	It's sad in a way, isn't it?
	Or maybe it isn't.
	Maybe it fosters technological advance, but I think it's kind of sad.
	If we cooperated as a world on space, then it seems to me that we could perhaps do an awful lot more, couldn't we?
	What do you think?
	Certainly the International Space Station is a very good example of countries pooling their efforts together.
	China asked to join the International Space Station in 1992, but the Americans said, no way, you're not joining us on this particular project, or indeed on any other.
	So I think there are some very real political problems around that.
	Only recently, the European Space Agency made the decision to have no further cooperation with China.
	And this goes very much against, I think, particularly the speeches of John F. Kennedy when he was president.
	He said it's really important that space exploration is beyond and above our earthly conflicts and that it should be an area where these conflicts and antagonisms do not intrude.
	And I rather fear that we've forgotten that in the past number of years.
	There are many countries that cooperate and work together.
	I mean, the European Space Agency, which you mentioned, I think is a particularly good example of that, because you have a mandatory science program in which all the countries are involved.
	And after that, countries pick and choose as to which ones they get involved.
	And there is what's called the principle of just retur, just return, which means that companies and industrial companies in each country benefit to the degree to which they invest more money.
	There was a time when, for example, Britain invested very little in the European Space Agency, but that changed in the past 10 to 15 years.
	So we're capable of doing this.
	Brian, I'm really sorry that we're out of time.
	Thank you very much indeed for doing this.
	And my thanks to Brian Harvey for his contribution.
	And also thank you to all the guests, Dr. Udite Tsai at the University of California, Irvine, and Nick Pope, of course, independent investigator and starred of ancient aliens before that.
	More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained online.
	So until we meet again, my name is Howard Hughes.
	This has been The Unexplained.
	And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and please stay in touch.
	And please remember that there is no edition of The Unexplained on television or radio on the 7th of May.
	And hopefully I'll be back on the 14th.
	Take care.

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