No, we don’t have to accept it to mine the moon.
The author ignores the other lunar-related entrepreneurial activities, focusing exclusively on the Google Lunar Prize. The people closest to getting to the moon in any serious way are private actors, not any government, because it’s only going to happen with a dramatic reduction in cost of access. Certainly China’s not doing anything significant.
Jon Goff has another post up on utilizing the upper atmosphere of Venus.
The book
Their world was just hit by an asteroid, whether they realize it or not.
Can it continue to work?
Note the implicit but not necessarily valid assumption — that in order to do space activities, you have to launch from your own soil. For instance, I’d bet that Kodiak would be happy to lease some real estate to them for high-inclination launches.
Has anyone actually ordered and received a copy yet?
[Friday-morning update]
Well, as you can see in comments, we have disparate results. One person has received it, one is going to next week, and one got a message that it’s a month away. So huh.
Jon Goff has an interesting blog post. Also, scroll through recent entries for a lot of useful speculation about utilizing Venerian resources. In many ways, Venus is a more interesting candidate for colonization than Mars is.
An asteroid has just hit the aerospace dinosaurs, in Europe, China, Russia, and here.
I didn’t expect the book to be available for purchase at Amazon for another couple weeks. This
Working on e-versions now.