Australian writer says space is assigned to Asia and western commercial companies

An opinion piece by Australian writer John Birmingham published on December 17, 2013 inside Brisbane Times comes with a hint of how the landing on the Chinese Chang'e 3/Jade rabbit will be seen in countries outside China as well as the United States.
Birmingham understands that Chinese moon landing to be a significant and largely positive development, albeit not for America's own space agency.
'Significant given it marks the arrival with the emerging Chinese superstate within the highest frontier; given it throws into sharp relief the retreat from the US from space; and given it presages a fresh realm of competition between Beijing's massive state supported space program plus the growing band of private, western firms trying to extract value from cold rocks from the sky.'
In short the new space race are going to be between China plus a bevy of western businesses like SpaceX, Planetary Resources, and Golden Spike, and others. This is actually, in contrast to Birmingham's assessment, a potentially bad situation.
The reason things could turn ugly is always website that China contains the military muscle of any government to back its space ambitions. Without his or her nation state to back them up, a gaggle of commercial miners about the moon, say, can be out of luck if China chosen to jump their claim.
Birmingham is correct that NASA is often a captive to crazy politics. But it needs liberating unless one desires that China becomes the dominate space power within the planet, thus taking possession with the future.
Ironically Birmingham is most beneficial known inside the United States because author of any trilogy of alternate history novels where the United States is destroyed by an confirmed unknown entity.

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