Asia's race to the Moon began yesterday when Japan launched an unmanned lunar probe, the most ambitious mission of its kind since the United States' Apollo missions of the 1970s.
China has dismissed suggestions that it is in a race with Japan to put a space probe in orbit around the moon.
The author argues that U.S. technological leadership and "pre-eminent position as the world's sole superpower" is being eroded by increasing space power in China, Japan, and South Korea.
Undaunted by its less than glorious track record in space, Japan's ministry of economy, trade and industry (METI) has ambitious plans to launch a giant solar power station by 2040.