Red (Chinese) Moon Rising — A Wakeup Call?
As a boy, I was in awe of America’s space program. The bigger-than-life vision of landing a man on the moon is what led me to study engineering and culminated in a high-technology career. Apollo inspired me and others of my generation to dream big dreams.
Now China has announced that, by 2017, it plans to perform a feat that a once youthful America achieved nearly half a century earlier (than this date) — to land a Man on the Moon. As is demonstrated by their recently successful manned space missions and heavy launch vehicle program, they are making great strides towards this goal.
Who cares if China lands a man on the moon? After all, America did it more than 35 years ago. Unfortunately, the first moon landings are now ancient history and a lost capability; America has squandered the ability to follow-up on the dreams of Apollo. We can’t even safely fly people to orbit, much less to the moon or beyond. Even were it a national priority, today we no longer have the launch systems to establish a presence on the moon. Although NASA has announced plans to return America to the moon by 2018, with the gap in launch vehicles and the huge demands on the national budget, this may well be a pipe dream.
Should we be alarmed that China strives to dominate the high-frontier? YES and for the same reasons that we could not allow Soviet dominion there. The Soviet communists were a very real threat and focused their energies towards trying to “bury” us. If they had been allowed to gain significant superiority in space operations, then today we would be living in a much different world.
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