Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The moon - a gigantic leap for the Chinese

5/20/02 11:09:27 PM Pacific Daylight Time

Given the current state of China's space program, there probably is no
need for anyone at NASA or the Pentagon to being lying awake nights
worrying about this little news item.  Still, it would not do for those
great humanists and lovers of democracy, the oligarchs of China, to be
the first to put a base on the Moon, whatever its value might be.  One
sometimes wonders if our own aerospace industry sponsors this sort of
behavior by the less savory nations of the world as a catalyst to huge
tax expenditures on our part to be sure that we are, in the immortal
phrase of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, "There firstest with the
mostest."

Jeff

http://www.guardian.co.uk/spacedocumentary/story/0,2763,719147,00.html