As India slept

Beijings five year plan for outer space unveiled last week highlights the sharpening contrast between Chinas vigorous national commitment to the final frontier and the faltering programmes of the United States and Russia. Once the pioneer in human space faring,Washington seems overtaken by technological ennui and political indifference. Russia,which once outdid the US in space,faces financial problems. If the enormous prestige associated with achievements in outer space and the all-encompassing Cold War rivalry pushed Washington and Moscow in the past,their internal troubles today are compelling the two to cede the leadership to Beijing.

Chinas space advances in the last few years have been consistent and relentless. It has become the third country after Russia and the US to put a human in space. Its astronauts conducted a spacewalk in 2008. Last November,China docked an unmanned spacecraft,Shenzhou-8,with the first space laboratory module Tiangong-1 that was launched into space a few weeks earlier. Beijing is building its own space navigation system,Beidou,as an alternative to the US-owned global positioning system GPS,the European Galileo,and the Russian Glonass. The latest white paper on Chinas space programme has called for specific goals to be accomplished in the next five years. These include the building of a space station,lunar mining,inter-planetary exploration and big advances in space sciences and technology.

The white paper is not just about civilian uses. As part of its active military space programme,China wants to develop rapid response launch vehicles that can help deal with urgent military tasks in outer space,expand its space surveillance capabilities,and use space technology to multiply the effectiveness of its armed forces. Put simply,Chinas latest plan will inevitably change the global civilian space hierarchy and alter the Asian military balance. That does not seem to bother New Delhi,where the UPA government has abandoned the political leadership of high-technology programmes,and the opposition parties have no interest in pressing for a bolder space programme. The question is not about India matching Chinas military and civilian space goals. Its about Delhis unpardonable failure to imagine a comprehensive national grand strategy for outer space.