In the mid 1970's, a Princeton physics professor named Gerrard K. O'Neill wrote a book called The High Frontier, in which he outlined how to get humans off Earth in a permanant fashion.

He also outlined why we should do it, and the book is well worth reading. In Dr. O'Neill's vision, we'd be building those Von Braun rings and O'Neill cylinders (the name is taken from his; from his suggestions in the book) right now, today.

So why didn't it happen? Why are we looking at one "International Space Station" in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), instead of dozens at the Earth-Moon Lagrange Points?

The basic problem is that there are two NASAs. There's the conceptual NASA, which encourages and pays for wild ideas, wild schemes, wild plans. Science Fiction kind of stuff, but theoretically achievable within fifty years.

Then there's the practical NASA, the NASA that actually has control over physical resourses, and is in charge of putting people and materiel in orbit. The practical NASA is very conservative, and doesn't do anything until it has been proven nine ways to Sunday.

In some respects, the belt-and-suspenders approach of the practical NASA is a good thing. It has kept the death toll among Astronauts incredibly low. We have sent a hundred or so people into the most inhospitable place available to us, and nearly every one of them have come back home, safe and sound.

The practical NASA hasn't paid much attention to Dr. O'Neill's ideas. We have no Lunar bases, no plans for solar power satilites, no active plans for long-term, high-occupancy space structures.

But there's a country on Earth who has those plans. There's a country on Earth who has announced their intention to have a permanantly manned Lunar mining station by 2020. There's a country on Earth who has the technology, and the heavy lift power, to do it. There's a country on Earth who is even now working on receiving stations for solar power satilites.

That country is China.

The biggest obstacle to going to the moon is cost. Right now, the hardest part of the journey, getting off Earth, costs aproximately $10,000 per pound. And, despite the promises of the paper NASA, that cost doesn't look like it's going to come down anytime soon.

America has proven reluctant to pay those costs to go back to the moon, to establish an outpost on the moon.

So why are the Chinese willing to do it?

In part, it's an international prestige thing. America is, today, the only nation on Earth which has sent men to the moon (it's worth noticing that no woman has set foot on the moon... yet). Yet China is the world's largest nation, with nearly a quarter of the world's population.

For China to do what America has been unwilling to do would be a kind of coup. But more than that, a permanant Lunar station would help China in the same ways it would help America... it would serve as a stepping stone to further developments.

One of the ingredients of effective fusion is an isotope of Helium with three electrons instead of two. Imaginatively called Helium-Three, this material is a key to getting more energy out of fusion reactions than is put into them.

Regolith, lunar soil, has proven to have a fair ammount of it, wheras Earth has very, very little. (The reasons for this are various and technical; take my word for it).

In addition to Helium-3, the moon contains iron, alumininum, and all of the other materials necisary for building satilites and stations. Why get them from the moon?

Because it's twenty times easier to lift something off the moon and put it in Earth orbit than it is to lift something off of Earth and put it in Earth orbit.

Think about it. When you watch the Apollo flights on videotape, canned for thirty years now, what do you see? Saturn V rockets, three stages, shoving a tiny capsule off of Earth. Then, the upper stage of the Lunar lander zips off the surface of the Moon.

This is the kicker. You don't have to use rockets. You can use a sort of magnetic slingshot called a "massdriver." This allows you to have a fully reusable, relatively low-maintenance way to send material out to stations being built in orbit.

Depending on how the catapult is built, it could also deliver rocks as weapons to Earth-surface targets. Instant meteorites. Just add space.

We should be going to the Moon. We should be building mining stations, solar power satilites, Lagrange habitats. We really should. Not just because the Chinese say they're going to, but because of the benifits those things would provide to us.

I've barely scratched the surface. If you're interested, read Dr. O'Neill's book, and then start looking into what's been done since he wrote it.

I've always wanted to go to the moon. I've always wanted to live in the moon.

I don't want to have to learn Chinese to do it.