Introduction: The 2nd Space Race

Dear Reader,

The Age of Aquarius is dawning again. In 2004 the US Government and its space agency, NASA, unveiled the Vision for Space Exploration, which contained the green light to send Americans back to the Moon, Mars and beyond... this time to stay. The first space race was between the US and the Soviet Union. It ended in 1975 when the two powers met in orbit, and shook hands (the Apollo-Soyuz Mission). As well in that year, the European Space Agency was born, making a race between two competitors outmoded. Today, after the American announcement, many other space powers declared their own intentions to move out into the high frontier: China, Russia, Europe, Japan and India. All now have their own plans and roadmaps for going to the Moon and planting bases there. What a great time to be alive! But this great action has a dark-side, that being the possibility of extending the current 'Clash of Civilizations' into space, perhaps not so much by arming spaceships, but by putting weapons in space, carving it up and creating spheres of influence. At the same time, corporations are getting interested in things like the possibility for mining near earth objects, locating and using valuable elements on the Moon, and offering regular people access to 'vacations in space' or perhaps if all goes well, on the Moon. On this website you may see the latest on what countries (or other entities) are doing (RANKING), as well as read what the real value of the 2nd Space Race is (PHILOSOPHY), see what kind of worlds await us in the Solar System (GEOGRAPHY), and finally, get a glimpse of the world of our grandchildren in the later 21st Century... if we do it right (GOALS).