Promising The Moon

My fascination with space travel is a popular theme for the weekly musical interlude and often I use this time to complain about the fact no one seems to be that interested in exploring space anymore, so as you can imagine I was quite intrigued when I read a story yesterday that China had successfully landed their first rover on the moon. It is the first "soft" landing on the moon since 1972, which could be why most people around the world don't seem to be giving the Chinese much credit. I guess I can see their point. I mean, why would anyone in this country make a big deal of something which isn't as impressive as landing men on the moon, which we did 40 years ago? I mean, NASA is landing rovers on Mars so wanting credit for landing one on the moon is a little like rolling up to a stoplight in your Honda Civic and asking the guy in the Lamborghini what he thinks of your ride. Also, there are some who would say there is nothing more to learn by going to the moon, which is why America stopped and that the Chinese should have aimed higher by trying to land a rover there as well. You could also make the case that this trip was unnecessary because the United States has been pretty open about what we found on the moon (that tends to happen when you don't find anything worth keeping secrets about) so we could have told them all we know about it and saved them a trip. But something tells me they wouldn't totally trust that we had revealed everything to them. (If the situations were reversed do you think we would trust that the Chinese had shared all their information?) So I know this isn't Neil Armstrong taking one giant leap for mankind, but it's not nothing either.

But here is why I am going to give credit to the Chinese - at least they are trying. When the economic crisis hit a few years ago it felt as though the first thing every country cut out of the budget was their space program (if they had even had one to begin with). As loyal readers know this is a sore subject for me because I happen to think cutting these programs shows a lack of imagination. It is far too easy to get bogged down in trying to perfect something which has already been invented. Sure, every now and again we need a better mousetrap but too often great minds are being used to re-engineer things we didn't need in the first place. I think humanity is at its best when we're trying to find answers to the unknown and you can't get much more unknown than outer space. Also, when you remember that humanity is only monitoring about 1% of space and would have almost no time for prepare should an asteroid decide to show itself, the lack of telescopes pointed skyward seems rather foolhardy. For now China has said this mission is only exploratory and eventually they want to send astronauts to the moon (they didn't give a timetable for that, though). However, unlike Iran which claims to be on the verge of sending a "second" monkey into space, I actually believe the Chinese are capable of accomplishing their space goals. I say good for them. I know we are supposed to be economic rivals with China but I feel like any country developing a system which will make sure we don't get blindsided by an asteroid is in everyone's best interest and we can quibble about proper credit later.