China’s Top Airship Scientist Promoted Program to Watch the World from Above

In 2019, years before a hulking high-altitude Chinese balloon floated across the United States and caused widespread alarm, one of China’s top aeronautics scientists made a proud announcement that received little attention back then: His team had launched an airship more than 60,000 feet into the air and sent it sailing around most of the globe, including across North America.

The scientist, Wu Zhe, told a state-run news outlet at the time that the “Cloud Chaser” airship was a milestone in his vision of populating the upper reaches of the earth’s atmosphere with steerable balloons that could be used to provide early warnings of natural disasters, monitor pollution or carry out airborne surveillance. (...)

Professor Wu, who turns 66 this month, has emerged as a central figure in China’s ambitions in “near space,” the band of the atmosphere between 12 and 62 miles above earth that is too high for most planes to stay aloft for long and too low for space satellites. (...)

Chinese strategists see near space as an arena of deepening great-power rivalry, where China must master the new materials and technologies needed to establish a firm presence, or risk being edged out. That anxiety has deepened as relations with the United States have soured under Xi Jinping, China’s resolutely nationalist leader. Near space, Chinese analysts argue, offers a potentially useful alternative to satellites and surveillance planes, which may become vulnerable to detection, blocking or attacks.

Near space “is a major sphere of competition between the 21st century military powers,” Shi Hong, a Chinese military commentator wrote in a current affairs journal last year. “Whoever gains the edge in near space vehicles will be able to win more of the initiative in future wars.” (...)

High-altitude balloons are made of special materials that can cope with the harsh extremes of temperatures and carry loads in thin air. For the balloons to be useful, operators on earth must be able to stay in touch with them across vast distances. Professor Wu’s open academic publications and other reports indicate that he and his scientific collaborators have long studied these challenges. (...)

In 2022, the cached EMAST web pages say, Professor Wu and his team either launched or planned to launch — the Chinese wording on the timing is unclear — three high-altitude balloons in the air at the same time to form an “airborne network.” The ultimate goal, the company said, was to create an airborne signals network in China using stationary balloons floating at least 80,000 feet high.

It likened the planned network to Starlink, the system of small, low-orbiting satellites operated by SpaceX. Starlink has provided communications support to Ukrainian forces fighting Russian invaders. By 2028, EMAST said, it hoped to “complete a global near-space information network,” but did not elaborate on what that meant.

by Chris Buckley, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Larry Mayer/The Billings Gazette, via Associated Press