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Back to the future, thanks to China

I was lucky enough to be alive during the early years of "the space race".

As a schoolboy who had an overwhelming interest in science and technology, I couldn't get enough about the USA and Russia's attempts to get to the moon and vividly recall such monumental milestones as the first man-walk, the first docking between two craft and the first landing itself.

Once moon-landings became "so last decade" during the 1970s, the sizzle and excitement seemed to disappear from space exploration.

Sure, we sent some craft to Mars and there was talk of an orbiting space station but until the first Mars Rover, none of this was the kind of stuff that stirred our emotions and imaginations during those heady years of the 1960s.

But now it would appear that China is about to create something of a renaissance in space exploration excitement.

According to media reports, China is preparing to launch its Chang'e-3 lunar mission towards the end of this year and that craft will attempt a soft-landing on the moon.

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At a time when the USA has just switched its latest Martian rover into "autonomous mode" so that it can navigate its own path across the surface of the red planet, performing an unmanned soft landing in our own back yard might seem pretty tame and "old school" -- but it's not.

The USA has always had a self-awarded reputation for designing and building "state of the art", cutting-edge technology and pushing the boundaries of science. China has a reputation for making stuff really cheaply and often with highly variable quality.

A "made in China" moon-mission therefore must surely be seen as having a comparatively low chance of success and therefore a much higher "excitement factor", despite the fact that it's all been done before, nearly five decades ago.

I'm picking that if the Chang'e-3 mission is successful, China will be attempting to put a man on the moon within 5 years, and that really will be something to write about.

Perhaps, when China can demonstrate that it has evolved from the land of cheap labour and knock-off products to a nation capable of successfully becoming only the second nation in the world to put a man on the moon, it will truly be considered a tech-superpower.

While it's true that China has developed its own nukes and fighter jets, none of these have yet been tested in "the real world" against Western equivalents. Right now I suspect the West is probably not gravely concerned at the capabilities of China's military-tech however, the day they put a man on the moon, that perspective would have to be significantly rethought.

Are any Aardvark readers old enough to remember those heady days of the "space race" and do you think that China's intention to put a man on the moon will provide something of a nostalgia trip?

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