Winston Churchill once described Russia as an enigma wrapped in riddle. I wonder what he thought of China. A mystery wrapped in a flour pancake with hoi sin sauce and guacamole, garnished with a Bentley Continental. Its a wierd place China. I’ve never been. The nearest I made it was Hong Kong. Which is a wonderful place that exists just to show westerners what the term ‘billions of chinamen’ really means. I’d never before realised how many oven-browned ducks there were in the world.

But China is an inconceivable place. Its still run by the Communist Party (and wow; what a party that is these days, more a rave really) the leaders of which are richer than Oligarchs. There is no Chinese character for ‘irony’. And China imports about half of the supercars the rest of the world produces. For their communists. From each, according to his ability; to each according to his needs. Yeah, well I ‘need’ a Lamborghini Aventura, don’t I?? A gold one.

So there’s lots of money in China, a quite a few people, so I’m led to believe. And the latest plan of that inscrutible but very clever nation is to go to the moon. As ya do. And not all of them, obviously, the moon’s not big enough. But this is China, so its not some vanity project to prove scientific ability nor engineering wonder. This is business. They want to ‘mine’ Helium. Those little Chinamen just love it when their voices go all squeaky. If only. But no. This is the very rare Helium3. Well, rare on Earth but abundant on the moon. And to describe it as ‘gold dust’ is to undervalue it massively. An ounce of gold is about 750 quid. An ounce of Helium 3 is around 20-50 thousand pounds. One space rocket full of it, about 40 tonnes, would power all of America for a year. They didn’t say what the rest of us would do, but America would be fine. So we should all really be packing our lunar gear and heading skywards to join this latest version of the goldrush.

If only life was that simple. Firstly you have to get there. My Transport for London Oyster Card stops at Barnet. I’d have to walk from there. Then there’s the problem of breathing. Can you hold your breath for about 4 months? I’m working my way up to it with 37 seconds the current limit. When you get to the moon you can’t just, kind’a, scoop up a sack of this Helium and take it to the nearest WE BUY YOUR HELIUM!!!! store. No, you have to get moondust and heat it to 600 degrees to get the helium out. I thought a little pick axe would do but that’s not the case. Then you have to get it all back to Earth and build a nuclear fusion reactor. And that’s the easy bit. Amazon probably sell them.

But the main problem was pointed out in Schwartzenegger’s movie Total Recall many years ago when they had a mine on Mars. Space is filled with really ugly, evil people, with five eyes and one leg and odd-shaped, intergalactic heads and I just hate to even think further south than arm level. So its dangerous with lazar guns and plasma bombs and shit like that. Plus, the phone signal is just awful on the moon and there’s no wifi.

Clever though, them Chinese.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx