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AMONG the exhibits in the museum at the Tanegashima Space Centre is
a model of a future space colony. It shows people living on the inside surface
of a gigantic rotating cylinder, in a landscape complete with mountains,
lakes and cities – in fact an idealised version of Japan’s own landscape.
Probably every country’s space agency has enthusiasts who cherish such dreams.
But Japan in the 1990s seems to be infected with a kind of space fever that
went out of fashion decades ago in the US and Europe.

Last year, Japan became the world’s third country to announce an independent
programme to put people into space. This year, it launched its first Moon
probe. Meanwhile, construction companies publish ‘feasibility studies’ of
Moon bases and tourist hotels in Earth orbit. A television station, Tokyo
Broadcast System, has two staff members training in the Soviet Union, one
of whom may become the first journalist in space. A Japanese company has
even bought a backup module of the Mir space station from the Soviet government
to promote its plans for building a spaceport in Hokkaido, northern Japan.

This interest in space by the world’s second largest economic power
impresses some and frightens others. Earlier this year the US, Japan’s most
important ally in space, almost began a trade war when Washington accused
Tokyo of behaving unfairly by developing its own satellite technology at
heavy cost instead of buying off-the-shelf spacecraft in open competition.
The US Department of Commerce fears that this policy is setting the stage
for Japanese companies to do with space technology what they did in the
past with shipbuilding, cars and consumer electronics.

Market opportunities are certainly one motive behind Japan’s interest
in space. The economic planners know that to compensate for the country’s
shortage of natural resources, high labour costs and an ageing population,
Japanese manufacturers must move upmarket, to produce the most valuable
products possible. Few industries add more value to raw materials than the
space business: a satellite the size and weight of a family car may sell
for $150 million (Pounds sterling 90 million).

At the moment, Japan’s space programme is comparatively modest. Contrary
to the myth of a united ‘Japan Inc’, officials responsible for space projects
spend at least as much time as their counterparts in the US and Europe fighting
a sceptical finance ministry for bigger budgets. The country’s total spending
on space in this financial year will be about $960 million, less than a
twelfth of NASA’s budget.

Japan’s space effort also has some home-grown handicaps. The country
has two separate space agencies. While this arrangement has some advantages,
scarce resources are duplicated. And only in Japan do space launches depend
on the whims of local fishermen, who allow blast-offs during two periods,
each of 45 days, every year. This is hardly the picture of a nation going
all-out to dominate the space race.

The real picture, as usual, lies somewhere between these extremes. Japan’s
space programme has weaknesses, but it also has great strengths, some of
which, such as the habit of doing good science on low budgets, are actually
products of adversity.

The two space agencies are the National Space Development Agency and
the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science. NASDA, modelled on America’s
NASA, is theoretically responsible for developing the technology to exploit
space; the much smaller ISAS is concerned with observing space. In practice,
it has proved impossible to avoid overlaps. The referee is the Space Activities
Commission, a body that has the job of setting the country’s space policy
and reports to the prime minister. In June last year, the commission announced
the new 10-year plan that will take Japan’s space programme to the end of
the century. The plan is significant for its emphasis on sending humans
into space, which until now only the two superpowers have done independently.

Japan’s first astronauts will be guests of another country. NASDA has
three specialists training with NASA in the US. One will fly in the American
space shuttle mission in June next year, running 34 different types of experiments
in life sciences and materials processing on behalf of his compatriots.
NASDA had hoped its astronaut would be the first Japanese national in space
but a television journalist is likely to scoop the distinction. Tokyo Broadcast
System’s ‘cosmonaut’ is due to fly to the Mir space station in December
this year, as part of a commercial deal similar to the one that the British
Project Juno has arranged. Within the next 20 years, however, NASDA could
be launching crews in Japanese-built spacecraft. ‘Manned spaceflight is
one of the pillars of the 10-year programme,’ says Tomifumi Godai, executive
director of the NASDA.

The agency has the highest profile of Japan’s space bodies, but it is
a relative newcomer. It was established in October 1969, and answers to
three government ministries, the Science and Technology Agency (which ran
NASDA’s predecessor, the National Space Development Centre), the Ministry
of Posts and Telecommunications, and the Ministry of Transport.

NASDA launches its rockets from Tanegashima, a subtropical island 40
kilometres south of the main Japanese archipelago. The first thing visitors
notice about the Tanegashima Space Centre is its stunning natural setting,
on the tip of a rocky cape surrounded by blue sea. Godai describes the site
as ‘the most beautiful as well as one of the smallest launch ranges in the
world’. Another distinctive feature is the lack of security precautions.
‘Japan’s space programme is purely for peaceful uses, so the site is completely
open,’ Godai says. This is no exaggeration: only a piece of string across
the road, and a polite request from an elderly gatekeeper, stopped a taxi
full of foreign journalists driving up to a rocket on the launch pad. That
would be unthinkable at Cape Canaveral in the US, let alone at Tyuratam
Cosmodrome in the USSR. Yet, if NASDA has its way, Tanegashima will become
one of the world’s main space centres.

At present, the main purpose of Tanegashima is to launch NASDA’s workhorse
rocket, the H-I. The rocket is a blend of Japanese and American technology.
Its first stage is a version of the US’s Delta rocket, built under licence
from McDonnell Douglas of the US. The rocket’s second stage, however, uses
a Japanese-designed engine, the LE-5, which has become an excellent advertisement
for the country’s space technology, and has never failed in flight. McDonnell
Douglas is even considering buying LE-5 engines from the Japanese contractor,
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The Americans are interested because the Delta’s
present second stage, though also superbly reliable, relies on technology
that is 25 years old. ‘The LE-5 is powerful and flight proven. That is the
reason for its attraction,’ Godai says. The H-I’s latest achievement, in
February, was to launch a sophisticated marine observation satellite and
two smaller spacecraft in Japan’s first simultaneous launch of three satellites
on the same rocket.

Overshadowing the H-I launch pad at Tanegashima are two new buildings
under construction. These are the launch pad and assembly building for the
agency’s next rocket, the H-II. NASDA has staked its reputation on the H-II,
which is due to make its first flight in 1993. The rocket will be the agency’s
first vehicle to rely entirely on Japanese technology.

The H-II is arousing interest outside of Japan, largely because of its
commercial possibilities. Capable of putting a satellite weighing 2 tonnes
into geostationary orbit 36 000 kilometres above the Equator, it will have
roughly the same capacity as Europe’s Ariane-4, the Soviet Union’s Proton
and the American space shuttle. The H-II will put Japan in a position where
it could be a serious competitor in the market of launching communications
and broadcast satellites.

For NASDA’s engineers, the H-II’s most important cargo will be the HOPE
spaceplane, another important part of the 10-year plan. HOPE is a reusable
spaceplane that will ride into orbit on an H-II, either to deploy a satellite
or to rendezvous with a space station, and glide back to a runway on Earth.
Its first flight will be late in the decade. Although artists’ impressions
invariably give HOPE a windscreen, implying a flight deck, it will carry
no human crew. But the advanced technologies will pave the way for a second
generation of spaceplane shuttle early next century that will carry astronauts.
This will be far more advanced than America’s space shuttle. For example,
to avoid the need for the troublesome thermal tiles, scientists drawn from
the Japanese government and from industry are working on ‘functionally gradient’
materials: those that change their composition gradually and continuously
through their form. A sheet of such material would be ceramic-like on one
side, for protection against the heat of re-entering the Earth’s orbit,
and metallic for strength and flexibility on the inside (‘Japan puts its
money into two-faced materials’, Technology, 24 February).

The third element of the 10-year plan of the Space Activities Commission
is Japan’s contribution to the American-led space station. If all goes well,
NASA’s space shuttles will launch the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) in
1998. It will consist of an open platform, complete with robot manipulator
arm, for experiments that are to be exposed to space as well as a pressurised
module in which astronauts will tend experiments. Engineers will begin building
a full-scale test version of the module this month, and work on the module
begins in 1992. The JEM astronauts, who have yet to be recruited, will start
training the same year.

Overall, Japan will contribute one-eighth of the total cost of the space
station (the other partners are the US, Europe and Canada). By the time
the space station is flying, however, Japan may no longer be the junior
partner. ‘In the past, other nations took the initiative,’ Godai says. ‘In
the future, we will offer more positive participation, with Japan taking
the initiative and encouraging other nations to take part.’

The commission’s timetable for the 10-year plan leaves precious little
margin for error or delay. Up to now, Japan’s space engineers have done
well: NASDA has never lost a rocket in flight. This is a tribute to the
quality of Japan’s space engineering, but it also reflects the cautious
approach to rocket technology, borrowing proven designs such as the Delta
from abroad and improving them step-by-step. As the space programme moves
into more innovative technology, it will have more chances to go wrong.

In July last year, NASDA admitted to the first such problem with the
H-II when it set back the maiden flight by a year. The trouble was with
the new main engine for the first stage, called the LE-7. (The proven LE-5
will power the second stage.) The LE-7, like the main engines of the space
shuttle, will run entirely on cryogenic fuels: liquid hydrogen and liquid
oxygen. Cryogenic engines generate much more thrust than do rockets fuelled
with kerosene and liquid oxygen, but they are notoriously temperamental
because of the stresses they generate. The main contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries, says that the first designs of fuel pumps were not up to the
job; during tests the turbine blades in the pumps cracked.

In September, NASDA experienced a second setback when a static firing
test of a prototype LE-7 went badly wrong. ‘Only a few seconds after the
commencement of combustion, there was a leakage of gas outside that destroyed
the engine and the facility,’ Godai says. The fire on the test stand cost
the programme another two months. The team is now betting publicly that
it can recover those months to meet the target of February 1993 for the
first flight. Godai feels confident that they can solve the problem solely
with Japanese technology. Firing tests resumed last month. Apart from the
main engine, Godai reports that work is going more smoothly than engineers
expected: ‘Everybody recognised that the LE-7 was going to be the most critical
part of the schedule and the technology.’

Even if all goes smoothly with the LE-7 from now – a remote hope when
developing large, liquid-fuelled rockets – the schedule allows little leeway
for other technical hitches. If Godai’s confidence in solving the problems
proves optimistic, NASDA may discover (as NASA did after the Challenger
disaster) that nobody in government likes an expensive space programme when
things are going wrong.

Even today, NASDA has to struggle for every extra yen in its annual
budget. This process will become even more difficult as the ambitious programmes
for the 1990s – the H-II rocket, the HOPE spaceplane and the space station
module, JEM – mature. Although the government has given its blessing to
the commission’s 10-year programme, it can pass budgets for only one year
at a time. This year, the finance ministry was relatively generous, giving
the agency an increase of 9.5 per cent in its budget, to 120 billion yen.
This is well ahead of the general increase in government spending. But to
turn the 10-year vision into reality, Godai says, will take an annual increase
of 10 per cent throughout the decade. By this measure, NASDA is already
off target. ‘We have to conclude that the budget is slightly insufficient
to execute all the programmes we would like.’

Trade tensions stretched

The agency’s space dreams may also hit political obstacles overseas.
Earlier this year, an ugly row erupted between Tokyo and Washington over
the CS-4 communications satellite, the first of which NASDA planned to launch
in 1995. The US Department of Commerce, anxious to guard one area of high
technology in which the US has a clear lead over Japan, last year listed
satellites in the ‘Super 301’ clause of the 1988 Trade Act, which threatens
retaliation against unfair trading. The US alleged that the CS-4 series
is a government-subsidised attempt to exclude American firms from a lucrative
market in supplying commercial satellites.

Tokyo responded that virtually every industrialised country, including
the US, subsidises its space industry. In any case, says Godai, NASDA is
merely developing the technology, not selling it. ‘As far as I know, the
technology has no commercial use, it is just a development project . . .
an engineering test satellite, for the development of communication technology.’
Last month, Japan backed down saying that it would allow foreign suppliers
to bid for commercial satellite contracts. The CS-4 project now seems doomed
(‘Japan drops satellite programme under US pressure’, This Week, 31 March
1990).

Further trade tensions are likely to surface if Japan enters the commercial
launching market. Godai repeats that this is not directly NASDA’s concern.
The only launches it plans to carry out for foreign agencies are ‘in the
spirit of international cooperation’. For example, Japan is discussing launching
an American satellite to measure rainfall.

On paper, the H-II looks a fearsome competitor in the business. With
a gross weight of 260 tonnes, it will be able to lift 2 tonnes into geostationary
orbit. Its commercial competitors, Ariane 4 and Proton, weigh 460 tonnes
and 680 tonnes respectively. The H-II’s designers also worked hard to cut
costs. When developing launchers in the past, we put the emphasis mainly
on payload and reliability,’ Godai says. ‘With the H-II, the priority is
the cost, to make it level or cheaper than those of equivalent rockets.’
The World Satellite Survey, published by Lloyd’s of London, says the H-II
rocket ‘is likely to provide a very competitive launch vehicle’.

Nevertheless, elegant technology alone does not guarantee success in
the business of launching satellites. Space agencies put their rocket ranges
as close as possible to the Equator, where the Earth’s rotation gives maximum
assistance to the launch. Tanegashima is 30 degrees north, roughly the same
latitude as Cape Canaveral, which means that launching a satellite into
geostationary orbit above the Equator will need more energy than that required
at Arianespace’s equatorial launch pad at Kourou in French Guiana.

Another threat to the H-II’s international competitiveness is beyond
the skills of rocket engineers: fluctuations in exchange rates have dramatically
altered the cost of launches. NASDA says it has designed the H-II to deliver
satellites into geostationary orbit at a cost of 8 million yen per kilogram.
In the mid-1980s, when the agency started planning on this basis, 8 million
yen was equivalent to about $36 000; when this article went to press, it
was nearer $50 000. It is ironic that the rise in the yen’s value, which
did more than anything else to push Japan’s industry from low-technology
into high-technology fields, is now threatening one of the highest technologies
of all.

While NASDA has the high profile in business and politics, the Institute
of Space and Astronautical Science is very much a scientists’ space agency.
The institute, originally part of the prestigious University of Tokyo, has
been launching rockets since 1955 (the first of the ‘pencil’ rockets, only
23 centimetres long, weighed 200 grams). More recently, ISAS launched two
probes of the international flotilla that intercepted Halley’s comet in
1986. And in January this year, it launched Japan’s first lunar mission,
a basketball-sized orbiter called MUSES-A. ISAS also operates Ginga, the
world’s only working X-ray astronomy satellite, which attracts a constant
flow of internationally known astronomers to its headquarters in Kanagawa
Prefecture, just outside Tokyo.

The creation of NASDA in 1979 should have put ISAS out of the business
of designing and launching rockets. The institute survived thanks to vigorous
lobbying, helped by the fact that Tokyo university’s alumni hold many of
the top jobs in the Japanese government. Since 1981, ISAS ended its formal
links with the university, becoming a separate institute under the Ministry
of Education, but it still maintains strong ties.

Compared with NASDA, ISAS runs on a shoestring. NASDA has just completed
a purpose-built viewing stand for VIPs at Tanegashima; spectators at ISAS’s
rocket range in Uchinoura on the island of Kyushu have to stand on a muddy
hillside. NASDA’s staff wear blue uniforms or immaculate business suits.
By contrast, Hiroki Matsuo, ISAS’s launch director, turned up to brief the
press at the launch of MUSES-A wearing a leather jacket and open-necked
shirt.

Officials of ISAS argue that the institute’s modest budget – this year
it has about 20 billion yen to spend – and low profile leave it free to
plan missions on scientific rather than political grounds. But ISAS is as
keen as ever on rockets. To avoid too much duplication when setting up NASDA,
the government restricted ISAS to building rockets with a diameter less
than 1.4 metres, leaving larger craft to NASDA. This restriction forced
ISAS’s engineers to design a remarkable series of solid-fuelled rockets,
of three and four stages, culminating in the M-3SII, which launched MUSES-A.
The mission’s cost is a modest $50 million.

Despite their ingenuity at packing a lot of punch into a rocket 1.4
metres in diameter, scientists at ISAS find the size limit frustrating.
In mid-1989, after several years of campaigning for a larger rocket, the
Space Activities Commission ruled in its 10-year plan that ISAS could construct
any rockets that it could launch safely from its range at Uchinoura. In
practice, this means rockets with a diameter of up to 2.5 metres.

This year, work started on a larger booster, the M-V, which will have
a payload only slightly lighter than NASDA’s H-I. Hitoshi Mizutani, a professor
in ISAS’s planetary programme, says the new rocket will allow the institute
to send much more ambitious spacecraft to the Moon and planets. Researchers
are designing spacecraft to visit the Moon’s surface, Venus’s atmosphere,
and most ambitious of all, to encounter a comet and return samples of its
coma gases to Earth (‘Who’s coming to Mars?’, ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ, 20 January).

NASDA, too, has a planetary agenda. It sees the H-II rocket as the best
launcher for more sophisticated missions to the Moon and beyond. Godai says
this does not mean encroaching on ISAS’s territory. In principle, NASDA
is in charge of all space developments, while ISAS is specifically in charge
of space science. This, says Godai, gives his agency responsibilities throughout
the programme. For example, its remote-sensing satellites are scientific
spacecraft.

Some cooperation exists between the agencies. The H-II’s solid-fuel
boosters are based on technology developed for ISAS’s rockets. ISAS relies
on NASDA’s ground tracking stations to collect data from its satellites.
And NASDA often consults ISAS’s astronomy experts. Insiders, however, say
there is virtually no collaboration in planning projects.

Rivalry between the two agencies will intensify if the finance ministry,
which has the final say whether projects such as the HOPE spaceplane stand
or fall, begins to ask why it is funding two agencies to do similar jobs.
NASDA has already found its higher profile to be a mixed blessing. In February
this year, an investigation by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun revealed that
the agency had spent about 15 million yen without authorisation on entertaining
government officials between 1986 and 1988. Such scrutiny will grow more
intense as NASDA’s budget increases, its foreign agreements become more
political than technical and if, or when, it loses a rocket in flight.

In a history of the Apollo space programme, Apollo, published last year,
Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox wrote of America’s space programme:
‘The truly fun parts . . . were Mercury and Gemini and the planning years
of Apollo, when the (space) centres were still independent and feisty, collaborating
when it suited them, sometimes going their own inefficiently separate ways
– but also electric with enthusiasm and imagination, prodigiously inventive.’
A quarter of a century on, Japan’s space programme is going through a similar
stage of development. It may lead to great things – perhaps even to Japan
becoming the first truly space-faring nation – but if it does, space scientists
and engineers may look back on these shoestring days as a golden age.