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First Commercial Mission To the Moon Launched From China
mbone writes with news about the first privately-funded spacecraft to travel the Moon. Cold War competition between superpowers dominated the first decades of space travel and exploration. Individual governments took the lead, bankrolling most of the process in the name of competition and nationalism. Ultimately international cooperation and collaboration took root, and the landscape is already very different. The present and future of space exploration is more collaborative, more international, and involves both space agencies and private companies. One such project is the combination Chang’e 5-T1 and Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (4M), which launched together last Thursday. Both projects are testbeds for ideas: Chang’e 5-T1 is a prototype for a robotic probe intended to return samples from the Moon to Earth, while 4M is a simple communications experiment encouraging amateur participation. But the intriguing bit is that 4M is a project of the private Luxembourg-based company LuxSpace, while Chang’e 5-T1 is a Chinese project, and the whole endeavor was launched on a Chinese rocket.
Maybe so. But UK and Japan will prevail too, whence the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is a British/Japanese conglomerate. If you've seen the documentary you would know that Weyland-Yutani is even more daaark deeeeep blue; not that anyone would hear you scream that anyway.
Let's just hope that the Chinese never find life on another planet, because the first thing they'll do is eat it!