{"id":23935,"date":"2016-03-24T21:46:32","date_gmt":"2016-03-25T04:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/china-likely-to-beat-nasa-back-to-the-moon"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:04:48","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:04:48","slug":"china-likely-to-beat-nasa-back-to-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/china-likely-to-beat-nasa-back-to-the-moon","title":{"rendered":"China Likely To Beat NASA Back To The Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/china-likely-to-beat-nasa-back-to-the-moon.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Chinese taikonauts will likely beat NASA astronauts back to the lunar surface in as little as five to ten years, longtime lunar scientist and geologist Paul Spudis now tells me. If so, that will happen primarily by default, as the lunar surface continues to drop off NASA\u2019s crewed destination radar.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, that doesn\u2019t preclude Russia, the European Space Agency (ESA), or numerous commercial space ventures \u2014 who have all expressed a desire to return astronauts to the lunar surface \u2014 from getting there sooner. But for now, Spudis thinks the Chinese are most likely to next make it happen.<\/p>\n<p>Spudis, author of the forthcoming, \u201cThe Value of the Moon: How to Explore, Live, and Prosper in Space Using the Moon\u2019s Resources,\u201d emphasizes that he does not object to a \u201cChinese presence\u201d on the lunar surface. Rather, he objects to the U.S.\u2019 long absence from the lunar surface and what he sees as \u201cour abdication\u201d of responsibility in creating a permanent American presence in cislunar space \u2014 the space between the Earth and the Moon. Such a presence, he argues, would guarantee unhindered access to both space commerce and resources available beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO).<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/brucedorminey\/2016\/03\/24\/china-likely-to-beat-nasa-back-to-the-moon\/#807626f604c9\">http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/brucedorminey\/2016\/03\/24\/china-l...7626f604c9<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chinese taikonauts will likely beat NASA astronauts back to the lunar surface in as little as five to ten years, longtime lunar scientist and geologist Paul Spudis now tells me. If so, that will happen primarily by default, as the lunar surface continues to drop off NASA\u2019s crewed destination radar. Of course, that doesn\u2019t preclude [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":380,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23935"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67919,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23935\/revisions\/67919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}