The New Moon Race looks to determine what China - and other nations - are planning to do with the Moon

by Morris Jones
Rosenberg Publishing, 2009
Hardcover, 184 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-877058-82-0
US$49.95

One of the arguments advocates of NASA’s exploration vision have used in recent years could be summarized as thus: “The Chinese are coming!” Or, perhaps a bit more accurately: “The Chinese are going—to the Moon!” Citing the growing capabilities of China’s space program, as well as the occasionally confusing, if not downright contradictory, statements by Chinese officials, space supporters in the US have warned that China could send humans to the Moon before the end of the next decade, and even before NASA returns under current exploration plans. Even former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, on a number of occasions while in office, believed that China would beat the US back to the Moon. “I will be surprised if the United States is back on the Moon before China is on the Moon,” he said in one early 2008 speech (see “Defending Constellation”, The Space Review, February 4, 2008).

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