Midwest Beer Belly Despair Blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15112760

China’s continuing to steam ahead with their space program and now have launched their first attempt at a space station. And good on them. China seems to be the only country right now with any serious interest in beginning to colonize the cosmos. One of the only good things I can say about Bush is that he approved new plans to return to the moon. Unfortunately Obama killed those plans (along with any hope America had, the bastard) and right now Russia is to poor to really afford a space program. Which leaves China as the only nation that can launch people into space on their own accord. Europe is very interested in space but they have to rely on NASA’s and Russia’s capabilities in order to put anyone in orbit.

The Chinese aren’t really a “threat” to the US, at least not right now, but what is important is that they are pushing ahead much more quickly than anyone else out there. China has a stated intent of colonizing the moon (or at least putting a base up there) and they are putting their money where their mouth is. Pretty cool, if you ask me. The only hope for humanity to survive in this universe is for us to get the hell off of Earth. We’re burning through our natural resources rather quickly and once we do, we need stuff from somewhere else to keep us going.

Combine this with the fact that there is so much we don’t know about space ( like how does human physiology change in long term low gravity situations? What would being on a different body in space do to the human psyche? How different from Earth’s gravity is too much for human birth?) and China moving ahead in their space program is really exciting. I’m hoping that it spurs a Cold-War-esque space race with America. We’ve run out of frontier in America and space seems to be the only place left for us to go. Not to mention that if the Chinese outstrip us in the space race, they’ll be the first to have orbital bombardment, which is terrifying.