Russia and Japan aim for the Moon - A New Space Race?

Source Article.

It was a rare confluence — the heads of the space agencies for Europe, Canada and Russia, along with senior representatives from the space agencies of India and Japan — all up on the dais together at a hotel in Washington DC, where they were on hand on 22 May to talk about the benefits of international collaboration at the Global Space Exploration Conference.

Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said that Russia will pursue extensive, long-lived operations at the Moon’s surface. “We’re not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago,” Popovkin said, through a translator.  “We’re talking about establishing permanent bases.” Similarly, JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, issued a clear pronouncement about targeting the Moon.  “We are looking at the Moon as our next target for human exploration,” said Yuichi Yamaura, an associate executive director at JAXA.

Interesting. The last time another country beat us to a space exploration goal, we quickly caught up. Now it seems that once again those Ruskis  are excelling against us in vision regarding space exploration. I wonder if, lacking the cold war, we'll allow our indignance fuel our innovation as it did in the past. Or if we'll simply let another nation beat us.