If you mine the newspaper archives for last year, or the year before (well, not exactly, you need for Chinese New Year, which being based on a lunar calendar is a movable feast) you will see many a story about how factories were desperately short of the labour they needed in the big Chinese manufacturing towns.
This year's September 27 marks three important lunar events -- a supermoon, a total lunar eclipse and Asia's Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival.
CNN: Best way to see supermoon? On a Chinese moon-viewing flight
We also take a closer look at how the commercial space sector is pushing exploration forward with Google Lunar X Prize senior director, Alexandra Hall, a lunar rover team at Carnegie Mellon, the Space Angels Network VC firm and Laser Motive, which is working on powering crafts through lasers.
In 1986, a luxury resort on a lunar finger of land in Oman or a luxury cruiser plying the headwaters of the Amazon was as far-fetched as the notion that there was a New World out there must have seemed to contemporaries of Columbus.
"Placing a NEA in lunar orbit would provide a new capability for human exploration not seen since Apollo, " the report reads.
MSN: NASA might lasso an asteroid and drag it to orbit near moon
Last week President Bush gave his full backing to NASA's project to create a lunar base, and many believe that the moon could be a jumping off point for Martian exploration.
Because CNY is based on a lunar calendar, it may fall in January or February.
FORBES: Chinese New Year Retail Sales Slow, High End Suffers
The view all around me was like that of a garden that had sunk into a lunar crater.
Ebb and Flow deliberately plunged into a lunar mountain in December after mapping the moon's gravity field in unprecedented detail.
One of the four instruments on Lunar Prospector is a neutron spectrometer.
But Hedman said this does not mean the other 179 countries that have not ratified the Moon Agreement are free to make a lunar land rush.
Laine believes that a Lunar space elevator would be much easier to construct than one on Earth, due to the lack of atmosphere and lower gravity.
FORBES: Liftport Is Kickstarting A Space Elevator - For The Moon
Founder Michael Laine has resurrected the company and taken to Kickstarter to drum up interest (as well as a little cash) in his latest project -- a lunar elevator.
ENGADGET: Liftport turns to Kickstarter for space elevator experiment (video)
In her chapter on the moon, she recounts how a friend of hers received a mote of moondust as a gift from a suitor who worked in a lunar research lab.
The final price tag on a Lunar space elevator?
FORBES: Liftport Is Kickstarting A Space Elevator - For The Moon
Armstrong's seemingly casual reaction to peril left his NASA colleagues in awe when, in May 1968, he picked exactly the right time to eject from a lunar landing simulator that had spun out of control.
Incentive backed challenges attract "maverick thinkers who challenge normal assumptions" and make heroes of the teams who compete in these paradigm-changing efforts to solve significant social problems like building the ultimate fuel-efficient car or developing a lunar landing vehicle.
After launching a lunar orbiter later this year, scientists will begin the process of choosing among several competing rover designs for exploring the Moon's geology and terrain, and now the first of these candidates has been unveiled for public consumption.
ENGADGET: Chinese engineers reveal nuclear-powered lunar rover
In addition to working towards building a Lunar space elevator, LiftPort also has its eyes on more down-to-Earth concerns, suggesting that its technology could also be deployed during emergency situations to help provide camera support to locate victims so they can be found and aided by responders.
FORBES: Liftport Is Kickstarting A Space Elevator - For The Moon
It might be too early to call a serious slowdown in the Chinese recovery as the latest data may have been affected by the Lunar New Year, a period that is often associated with a sharp increase in the price of food and other goods, which occurred in January in 2012 and February in 2013.
That will be followed by deployment of an unmanned lunar orbiter mission along with a nuclear-powered landing vehicle to support lunar rover delivery and sample return operations.
Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt -- a geologist at the time, and the only scientist to make the lunar journey -- served a term as U.S. senator from New Mexico, but was defeated in a run for re-election in 1982.
The Cold War produced supersonic jets, interstate highways, a manned lunar landing and the Internet.
Mr Nilekani's volume would provide a useful text for such a new lunar society.
It's also the first time in more than 30 years that a supermoon and a total lunar eclipse are happening on the same day.
CNN: Best way to see supermoon? On a Chinese moon-viewing flight
Eventually, ice deposits could provide water for a manned lunar base, which would otherwise have to bring its water expensively from earth.
Marc Dolce faced that question when Nike tapped him to create the Lunar Force 1, a limited edition of the Air Force 1.
They have been testing a laser system for measuring lunar dust and soil kicked up by rocket exhausts, and while using precipitation as a substitute to calibrate the laser, they found they could measure the average size of raindrops passing through it.
ENGADGET: NASA accidentally improves weather forecasting with lunar dust-measuring lasers
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