from Digital Journal

China could own the Moon by 2026, U.S. space entrepreneur warns

OCT 20, 2011 by JohnThomas Didymus

Las Cruces – A U.S. space entrepreneur, Robert Bigelow, has sounded alarm that China could own large portions of the moon by 2026, edging out the United States in the race for ownership of the Moon.

Mr. Bigelow made this warning at the 2011 International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight on Wednesday.Robert Bigelow, according to Space.com, said China’s growing technological capability, economic buoyancy, motivation and will to win the space race to “own the moon” places it at advantage to the U.S. which he said is still “basking in the lunar glory from 40 years ago.” Bigelow said that in spite of the U.S. still looking back to its glorious past as the first nation to land a man on the Moon,

“…we don’t own one square foot of the damn place. NASA is a shadow of the space agency it once was in the 1960s and 1970s.”

The American space entrepreneur, whose company Bigelow Aerospace, is building human colony labs and private inflatable space modules for both government and commercial ventures, said under present international laws, any nation could claim ownership of lunar territory it occupies through continuous human presence.

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