An opinion piece by Australian writer John Birmingham published on December 17, 2013 inside the Brisbane Times offers a hint of how the landing with the Chinese Chang'e 3/Jade rabbit has been seen in countries over and above China plus the United States.
Birmingham is aware that Chinese moon landing like a significant and largely positive development, albeit not for America's own space agency.
'Significant because doing so marks the arrival in the emerging Chinese superstate about the highest frontier; since it throws into sharp relief the retreat in the US from space; and as it presages a brand new realm of competition between Beijing's massive state supported space program along with the growing band of private, western firms trying to extract value from cold rocks from the sky.'
In simple terms the new space race will be between China as well as a bevy of western brands like SpaceX, Planetary Resources, and Golden Spike, and others. This is actually, unlike Birmingham's assessment, a potentially bad situation.
The reason things could turn ugly is the fact China has got the military muscle of any government to back its space ambitions. Without their particular nation state to back them up, several commercial miners for the moon, say, could be out of luck if China thought we would jump their claim.
Birmingham is appropriate that NASA is often a captive to crazy politics. But it needs liberating unless one desires that China becomes the dominate space power about the planet, thus taking possession on the future.
Ironically Birmingham is most beneficial click here known from the United States since the author of any trilogy of alternate history novels when the United States is destroyed by an established unknown entity.