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Link....<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b>Story Highlights<br /><br /><i>*China embarking on a space program the world has not seen since the 1960's<br />*Chinese may be interested in mining helium-3 -- a powerful, potential fuel source<br />*China developing a new rocket with enough thrust to put a space station into orbit<br />*They are planning a televised space walk by three taikonauts next year</i></b><br /><br />(CNN) -- When China's lunar orbiter blasted off last month, there was not a cheer or smile or a "whoo-haaa" to be had in mission control.<br /><br /> Perhaps because for the government scientists, it was just another small step in an ambitious space program which could ultimately see a Chinese space station orbiting the Earth, a Chinese moon colony and a joint China-Russia explorer on Mars.<br /><br />If all goes well, and so far it has, the Chang'e 1 will spend the next year orbiting the moon, mapping the surface and looking for resources. Next, the Chinese hope to send an unmanned rover to the moon by 2012, with a robotic mission to bring back samples by 2017. Officials have recently backpedaled from goals of putting a taikonaut (the Chinese version of an astronaut or cosmonaut) on the moon by 2020, but analysts believe that is still a pressing ambition.<br /><br />"If China can go to the moon, eventually with a manned program, it will represent the ultimate achievement for China in making itself essentially the second most important space power, accomplishing what even the Soviets had not," says Dean Cheng, a China military analyst for CNA, a private research corporation<br /><br />According to Cheng, the Chinese are now embarking on a systematic space program the world has not seen since the 1960's and for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is facing real competition. That may explain why the h</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>