There’s a new space race, thanks in part to Google’s Lunar X Prize, but also because the Moon is indeed full of mineral wealth.

But the new race is not for exploration, it’s for exploitation. The Moon has titanium, trace amounts of water, and rare minerals used in high tech electronics: “In our case it’d be people prospecting for the best places to mine the water, or mine the metals…”-David Gump, Astrobotic Technology

China has a lunar satellite in orbit, and hopes to put an unmanned explorer on the Moon by 2013.  India also has a satellite orbiting the Moon.

You might think Republican Newt Gingrich is crazy with his plans for U.S. domination of the Moon, but he’s not too far off from official policy!

NASA (National Aeronautics & Space Administration) issued a report (dated July 20, 2011) titled How to Protect and Preserve the Historic and Scientific Value of U.S. Government Lunar Artifacts.

It’s not just about artifacts brought back from the Moon, but it recommends that the Apollo sites on the Moon should be declared “no fly zones”, and that the U.S. must make every effort to get back to the Moon: “…we’re coming into an age of exploitation…because of the changing environment, and much more use of space by other groups…we’re beginning to think about it.”– Robert Kelso, author of NASA report

The U.S. government has also declared that the United States is the only country that should have exclusive access to the Moon, simply because it was the first to put people on the Moon!