Bu Huo Xiao Xing Xing: The Capture of Asteroid X19380A: A Race between China and the United States to Capture Asteroids

The time was between 2123 and 2148. In the 22nd century, most world mineral resources were depleted, and asteroids appeared to be the only locations in the Solar System to look for resources. During the year 2132 U S intelligence discovered that there was a fleet of giant clustered rockets sitting on the launch pads in Jiuquan, the largest Chinese space port, ready for launch. Alarmed, authorities searched old surveillance files and discovered that this fleet was a part of a deep interplanetary space expedition project which began years ago. Famed U S space scientist Dr. David Zhang of NSEA (National Space Engineering Administration) examined the surveillance images, and discovered that a newly established Chinese corporation XinTianDi was developing a kind of humongous nuclear devices with powers equivalent to several thousand megatons (billion tons) of TNT equivalent. A Los Alamos nuclear weapon expert Jack Brown was of the opinion that such huge nuclear devices had no places in war. Meanwhile, Dr. David Zhang also discovered that the armada of giant spaceships was also the work of XinTianDi, and a fleet of spaceships launched earlier were heading towards a 90 mile sized asteroid 8 Flora. U S President immediately ordered the launch of a spy spaceship to 8 Flora to find out the intentions of the Chinese space fleet. This spy spaceship discovered that the Chinese were using autonomous robots to set up a base station on 8 Flora, and the Chinese had started mining operations on 8 Flora. U S immediately began a space project as never seen before, to establish a mining base on 8 Flora, and this project was headed by David Zhang. Thus China and the United States were engaged a fierce but peaceful competition to mine the asteroids.

China was one step ahead. Under the leadership of Dr. Wei SiMei (Stanley Wilson), China used nuclear explosives with total blast power of several thousand megatons TNT equivalent to separate a pair of contact binary asteroids, sending one of the two components to near earth space, and this component, X19380A, became a satellite to the Moon. China renamed this newly acquired Moon satellite "GuangHanGong", a mythical palace on the Moon in Chinese mythology. Soon afterwards, U S also used a set of humongous nuclear blasts to send an asteroid to near earth space, and it also became a satellite to the Moon. The United States named the newly acquired trophy Mahina, Hawaiian goddess of the Moon. The United States used the excuse to develop Man in Mars program to mothball Mahina, and secretly planned to use it for military objectives. China, on the other hand, developed GuangHanGong into a space tourist resort. China built a space hotel on this asteroid, and leased lands to several financial groups of the world to develop similar space resorts. This book ends with a maiden voyage of a Chinese space liner, HouYi-Chang to GuangHanGong.

As for the story of La Boutique Fantastique, please read this book.

Before retirement, the author Dr. Hong-Yee Chiu was a distinguished world class NASA Space Scientist and Astrophysicist with over 130 publications in areas like black holes, neutrino astronomy, neutron stars. He coined the word "Quasar".