China Meets the Challenge of the Future

By Dave Stevens.

China has just launched a probe which will land on the Moon and drive around exploring the surface. The Chang’e 3 probe, coming on the back of two successful Chinese lunar orbiter missions, will be the first soft lander to reach the moon for 37 years. China has made it clear that these probes are the build-up to sending men back to the Moon. This time, to stay.

Why? Because, as mission science adviser Prof Ouyang Ziyuan of the department of lunar and deep space exploration told the foreign media on Monday 2nd December, there are vast reserves of materials and energy on the Moon. Materials and energy which are running out, or running short, here on Earth.

As the Chinese space chief put it: “The Moon is full of resources – mainly rare earth elements, titanium, and uranium, which the Earth is really short of, and these resources can be used without limitation”. He also pointed out that solar energy to extract such minerals is abundant and free on the Moon, and in the longer term it is the only nearby source of the rare isotope Helium-3, which offers the long sought Holy Grail of fusion power, the fire that makes the Sun burn.

Leading British space scientist, Prof Richard Holdaway of the government-funded laboratory RAL Space, who has much experience working with the Chinese, believes they mean what they say.

“They started from a long way back but now they’re catching up fast – they want to monitor what’s happening on the ground, they want to be part of the analysis of climate change and a much bigger programme looking at the Moon for mining or as a staging post to other parts of the Solar System.”

As for a Chinese manned moonbase extracting minerals:

“It’s perfectly plausible from the technical point of view, absolutely plausible from the finance point of view because they have great buying power, so I think, yes, there’s nothing at all to stop them doing that probably within something like 10 years”.

As everyone knows, an American of British descent, the late Neil Armstrong, was the first man to set foot on the moon, 43 years ago. But he was soon followed by the last, Eugene Cernan, in December 1972. In what history may well mark as one of the great historical turning points marking the beginning of the Fall of the West, America reached the Moon. And then gave up and stopped going. Britain of course did not even try, abandoning its manned space programme almost before it began.

China does not intend to do the same. Their shrewd and far-seeing government has a clear long term vision they will realise however long it takes. Not the short-term publicity stunts that once sent a dozen Americans for a few quick visits, but a sustained plan to establish their nation permanently and in strength beyond Earth’s sky. A plan inspired by China’s decidedly racial brand of nationalism. As Professor Ouyang told the People’s Daily in 2006: “Lunar exploration is a reflection of a country’s comprehensive national power. It is significant for raising our international prestige and increasing our people’s cohesion”.

It is also, as the Chinese Government realises even if those of the West do not, where the future of humanity as an advanced technological species must lie. That technology, that Industrial Revolution, was built over the last quarter of a millennium by white men. Now it has exhausted all the easily extractable ores and fuels – if it ever falls – it will not rise again. Whilst it is now exhausting ever more inaccessible and expensive to obtain natural resources. A day will come when it is no longer practical to extract what remains. When that day comes, technology, and the civilization and population that technology supports, will come crashing down. Billions will die. The survivors will never again be able to create a civilization able to leave its homeworld, and in the end our species will perish as if it had never been.

Unless, while we still can, we establish a permanent, self-sustaining manned presence beyond Low Earth Orbit. As the Chinese, apparently alone, are now doing. There are massive start up costs – it is expensive, not just in money but in energy, to get stuff out of Earth’s gravity well. There needs to be a massive upfront investment for many years before resources and energy start flowing back from the mines and factories and energy collectors on the Moon, and amongst the asteroids and in Space habitats. Capitalism, driven by profit and short term return on investment, will never do it, beyond perhaps launching Earth satellites. Nations could, mobilizing resources for a long-term project that will take decades to pay for itself and whose full payoff will take centuries or longer.

One nation, the largest nation on Earth is now doing so. If they maintain that policy as they promise, they will escape the resource constraints set by Only One Earth. They will build the first civilization beyond our world, able to grow and spread indefinitely, in space as well as wealth. They will be able to spread from the Moon across the Solar System, one day to the stars. And their people will live whatever happens to civilization on Earth. They will give their people infinity, and thereby perhaps also eternity.

The Chinese Government clearly knows this. We need to. The nations of Europe, instead of wasting their time floundering about in the globalist bureaucratic bog based in Brussels, need to join together as sovereign entities to match the Chinese and establish our own permanent, self-supporting manned base on the Moon. If we do not, white men may have established Earth’s first industrial-technological civilization. But only yellow men will keep it going. And only they will carry on the expansion of humanity beyond Earth.

Overhead, the stars are waiting. We can share them with China – there will be room and to spare for all. We should not surrender them to China. Because, as our ancestors who explored and conquered a world did not, we lacked the courage and because, as again our ancestors did not, we lacked the vision. We must show that we are worthy of our ancestors and a match for the Chinese. On Earth and beyond it.