How China Will Get To the Moon Before a Google Lunar XPrize Winner

An anonymous reader writes in with this link about the advances in China's lunar program. "A $30 million Google-backed competition to land a spacecraft on the moon may be about to be scooped. China's Chang'e 3 probe successfully put itself into lunar orbit on Friday in preparation for an attempted touchdown around Dec. 14. China won't be winning the prize money, which is reserved for privately funded, previously enrolled teams, not government agencies."

Comments

Re:missing the point

[subreality]

its widely recognized that US beat the Soviets in the early space race

By whom?

First artificial satellite: Sputnik
First human in space: Yuri Gagarin
First human in orbit: Yuri Gagarin (He gets mentioned twice because he achieved this before the US managed even a suborbital flight)
First lunar flyby: Luna 1
First impact on the moon: Luna 2
First spacewalk: Aleksei Leonov
First soft landing on the moon: Luna 9

The commitment to boots on the moon led to Gemini turning things around in the mid '60s, but before that the Soviets did quite well, especially with Earth-orbit tech.

Re:One small post for man

[Anonymous Coward]

One giant leap for mankind.

This.

I live in America. I like its culture. I like its people. I'd like to see it propagate offworld. But if my tribe is no longer interested in taking the high ground, I'd rather see my species - be it 50, 500, or 5000 years from now - speaking some variation of Mandarin than not living offworld at all.

My tribe's ancestors went there in peace for all mankind. Good luck, Chinese dudes.