Amidst China’s successful launch of its first taikonaut, there have been persistent questions — why space? why now? how can you justify the expense? Patience, grasshopper, there are answers, but they are more apparent to those who take the long view than those who are more worried about their quarterly P&L sheets.

Why Space? If you’re a nation of one billion plus, on a land with diminishing resources, you have only one real option: conquest. Thanks to the vice-like grip the US holds over the rest of the planet militarily (outspending Russia and Europe put together if I recall right), that one is a fool’s errand. The second option is to think out of the box, or in this case out of the geoid.

Why Now? The plan was actually hatched more than 10 years ago, and it was scheduled to come to fruition around now, and that was a very good idea, because it happened around a local maxima for the Chinese economy. This
is not to say that the Chinese economy will tank in the next few years, but the going may not be as good as previous years have been, what with the weak dollar, their dollar-pegged exchange rate, and a hurting US economy.

How can you justify the Cost? Besides the usual blather about minerals and terraforming in space, there is one other clincher. Space Program: $3bn/year. Manned Space Flight: (out of my hat) $400mn. Putting a PLA base where the Americanos find it impossible to touch cleanly: priceless. ‘Nuff said.

Of course, I hope that whoever sets up Earth’s first extraterrestrial colonies is rather more interested in minerals and terraforming than military bases. Earth looks much too beautiful from space, whatever script you use and whatever language you speak. But if it’ll take Star Wars to put man into space, I’ll take it over Star Trek anyday.