Is China Poised to take Ownership of the Moon?

Although treaties forbid ownership, this powerful nation would have little resistance when laying claim to lunar resources.

THE GIST

• Within about 15 years, China could have a permanent presence on the moon, and be laying claim to its resources.
• There may not be anything the United States, hobbled by debt and politically polarized, can do to stop China.

By the time U.S. astronauts return to the moon they may need permission to touch down -- from China, which is laying the groundwork for a lunar land grab, says long-time space advocate and entrepreneur Robert Bigelow.

Owning the moon is the first step in a game Bigelow, founder of Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, calls "Solar System Monopoly."

"This will characterize the 21st and 22nd centuries and beyond. If we ignore this, it will be at our extreme peril," Bigelow said at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight under way this week in Las Cruces, N.M.

The way Bigelow sees it, China, which has no debt, cash reserves of $3 trillion, technical skills, a long-term strategy and strong national support, will lay claim to raw materials on the moon in about 15 years.

The land grab will occur despite an international treaty barring ownership of extraterrestrial bodies, concludes Bigelow, who points out that China's growing global economic influence will make it less likely other countries will object to its lunar expansion.

"This isn't going to start World War III," Bigelow said. 

There's several reasons why China might want the moon, not the least of which is its trove of mineral resources that include water and helium-3, a potential fuel for fusion energy reactors. Laying claim to the moon also would have a powerful psychological impact, displacing America's Apollo forays and catapulting China's international status in one fell swoop.

"Nothing else China could possibly do in the next 15 years would cause as great a benefit for China," Bigelow said.

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With the United States straddled by debt and political gridlock, Bigelow thinks the first round of the game is already lost. But there's still time to give China a run for its money on Mars.

"Hopefully this will produce the fear factor necessary to motivate Americans," Bigelow said.

China, which is not a member of the International Space Station program, last month launched a test module for its own outpost in orbit. A capsule to robotically dock at the module is scheduled to be launched in November. That will be followed by human missions in 2012.

In addition to a small space station, China has announced plans for a lunar base by 2020.

Sasquatch DNA Proof: Debunked by Many

A Texas veterinarian-researcher claims to have shown that the elusive creature known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch is a human hybrid, descended from human females who mated with males of “an unknown hominid species.”  In a statement released on Saturday, Melba S. Ketchum said that her conclusions emerged after she sequenced samples of purported Sasquatch DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA in the samples, which offspring inherit from their mothers, was identical to modern human mitochondrial DNA, she said. But the nuclear DNA samples — the genetic blueprint that mixes genetic material from both parents — appeared to be a mix between human nuclear DNA and “novel non-human sequence.” 

“Genetically, the Sasquatch are a human hybrid with unambiguously modern human maternal ancestry,” Ketchum said in the statement.

But many others weren't yet convinced.  A few of their reasons:

This is Bigfoot we’re talking about, a creature that has never definitively been observed, despite decades (centuries?) of reported sightings. Over the years, Los Angeles Times reporters Kim Murphy and Eric Bailey both wrote about scientific and not-so-scientific searches for the possibly mythical man-beast.   

A related problem: As no one has yet seen or captured or exhumed a Sasquatch, many question whether Ketchum’s samples actually came from such an animal. Ketchum’s statement did not describe where she got her DNA samples. 

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Lottery: Powerball Up to 425 Million this Week

A lot of hopeful eyes are glued on the biggest number in gambling this week -- the record $425-million Powerball jackpot that’s destined to make some lottery ticket buyer somewhere very, very happy.

In advance of Wednesday's drawing, some people are already very happy: officials in states selling Powerball tickets. Behind the scenes, they've been setting the stage for bigger and bigger jackpots, both for ticket buyers and states selling tickets. 

In the 2011-2012 fiscal year, state lottery commissions -- 33 of which run Powerball -- saw a historic year of revenue from ticket sales. Despite a still-anemic economy, 32 of the country’s 44 state lotteries set new sales highs that will make Powerball’s record-setting payout look like a pittance.

QUIZ: Test your knowledge of Powerball

You think $425 million is impressive? Try $60.8 billion.

That’s the amount state lotteries reporting making in the last fiscal year, according to the North American Assn. of State and Provincial Lotteries. That’s an 8.7% increase from the previous fiscal year. And at the pace the industry is going, you can expect those numbers to continue.

Lotteries are, by their nature, losing games for ticket buyers; they’re designed to be fundraising machines for state governments, which are getting increasingly talented at squeezing revenues out of buyers with huge jackpots and scratch tickets.

Those bigger payouts aren’t just lucky runs. They’re intentional. Last year, Powerball doubled its ticket price to $2, which the lottery said would boost average jackpots from $141 million to $255 million, with the starting jackpot now beginning at $40 million instead of $20 million.

The impact on Powerball? A 27% increase in sales revenue despite a doubling of prices.

That’s made lotteries an attractive money source for state governments in a time of budget shortfalls and Republican resistance to raising taxes. Gambling used to be widely illegal across the U.S., with lottery fraud helping lead the cause for a ban in the 1800s.

Now state lotteries are like any other big business with a mandate for maximizing profit, with talk of “best practices”. Gambling in the back room has been replaced by -- in Minnesota -- lottery machines at ATMs and gas pumps.

While the public worked itself into a frenzy over this year’s $656-million Mega Millions jackpot, New Jersey was busy funneling $950 million of its record $2.8 billion in sales into programs for education, veterans, the developmentally disabled and others.

Before somebody had even bought a winning $337 million Powerball ticket in Michigan in August, the state was dumping a record $770 million of lottery sales money into its School Aid Fund.

For some, the knock against lotteries is that they’re essentially a hidden tax on the poor, who are more likely to buy tickets in the hopes of making it rich -- by playing against a system designed to take more money from ticket buyers than it pays out.

Others bat down that criticism, replying that lotteries are consensual; no one is forcing ticket buyers to chase a $425-million jackpot, no matter how infinitesimal their odds of winning. (The odds are 1 in 175,223,510.)

But for lotto managers, as another huge Powerball jackpot approaches and the holiday season looks to see higher ticket sales, life is good.

“The Thanksgiving season is a time of year when we need to say ‘thank you’ for all of the great things that have befallen us both personally and professionally,” District of Columbia Lottery Executive Director Buddy Roogow wrote in the most recent edition of Lottery Insights, a trade magazine. “Across our industry, we are thankful for the great resume of customers, vendors and employees to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude. So many lotteries enjoyed record years. Let that continue into the new year.”

Just What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Eliminating America's dependency on foreign oil has been a policy goal for at least the last two U.S. Presidents.  According to the International Energy Agency, by 2020,  the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's number one oil producer.

However, there's still some work to do.  The United States Energy Information Administration reported that 45% of the petroleum consumed by the U.S. in 2011 was from foreign countries.   Even though the country is well on its way to becoming self reliant, there's always a chance we could hit a major bump in the road.  The good thing is we have protection.  It's called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or S.P.R.

So here's how the S.P.R. works:

The reserve was created after the 1973 energy crisis when an Arab oil embargo halted exports to the United States.  As a result, fuel shortages caused disruptions in the U.S. economy.

The reserves are located underground in four man-made salt domes in Texas and Louisiana.  All four locations combined hold a total of 727 million barrels of oil.  The inventory is currently at 695 million barrels.  That's around 80 days of import protection.  It's the largest emergency oil supply in the world -- it's worth about $63 billion.

Only the President has the ability to tap the reserves in case of severe energy supply interruption.  It's happened three times.  Twice within the last decade.  In 2005, President Bush ordered the emergency sale of 11 million barrels when Hurricane Katrina shutdown 25 percent of domestic production.  In 2011, President Obama ordered the release of 30 million barrels to help offset disruptions caused by political upheaval in the Middle East.

Following the release order, the reserve issues a notice of sale to solicit competitive offers.  In the most recent sale involving the Obama administration, the offers resulted in contracts with 15 companies for delivery of 30.6 million barrels of oil.  To put that in context, last year the U.S. consumed almost seven billion barrels of oil — that's 19 million per day -- or about 22% of the world's consumption.