China Declares Competition (in SPACE!)

China has officially come out and stated the obvious, there is a new Space Race , and like the last one, it has the potential of shaping the look of what space looks like for the foreseeable future.? But what does all of this mean?? And how do we attach a value proposition onto it?? While the old adage of “only time will tell” is just as applicable for the present situation as any other, I think that to understand these questions we have to at least recognize what brought us here.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) published a new strategic plan describing their hopes and aspirations for the moon, titled the “Strategic Concept of Resource Utilisation Development Route of the International Lunar Research Station.” ?One of the many things that makes this plan noteworthy, is the face that the plan, in a surprising change from Chinese policy to date, has recognized the US as a competitor!? “In the historical context of that period [the Cold War Space Race between the US and the then Soviet Union], the race to demonstrate superior political strength made lunar exploration unsustainable. . . It is foreseeable that in the next 20 to 30 years, China’s International Lunar Research Station and the US Artemis programme will compete in terms of technology and operational efficiency on the same historical stage and at the same geographical location (the south pole of the moon).”

The fact that a space race is underway is hardly unusual or groundbreaking.? NASA administrator publicly acknowledged such a fact as far back as January 2023 in an interview with Politico that received a lot of buzz where he flat out stated “It is a fact:? we’re in a space race.” ?And the discourse on the potential for competition and conflict goes back much further than that.?

However, China, likely looking to a much longer strategy, has for a long time refused to recognize such a direct competition, instead choosing to focus more on its own goals and aspirations for dominance in space regardless of the actions of the US or other countries.? This strategy began of course to change with the development of the International Lunar Research Station which China proposed as a scalable and maintainable comprehensive scientific experiment facility operating autonomously on the lunar surface and lunar orbit which would include short-term crewed participation.? The vision of this concept was to utilize the resources of multiple countries around the earth for the creation of this station (sounding familiar?).

It does not take a lot of analysis to realize that this plan of China’s sounded very familiar to the NASA Artemis program .? And what China finally seems to be begrudgingly admitting to is the inherent competition that has and will result from these two international programs for the moon.

So why does this matter?? Well to really answer that question I think that we must necessarily make a few assumptions.? The first and most controversial of these assumptions is probably that we must assume that China and its partners will, as a part of this program, continue to adhere to international law as enshrined in the Outer Space Treaty and its accompanying conventions.? As readers of this simple article no-doubt already know, such treaty includes the concepts of Space being open for the use of all, the moon being a weapon-free zone, and the lunar surface being not subject to national appropriation.? So, despite the multiple reasons for being skeptical of this idea, for this surface analysis lets assume that this now-recognized competition will not involve changes in the international legal order.

If such a theory could hold, then maybe such a race is not such a bad thing.? Maybe that wasn’t your first thought so let me try to defend myself.? There are so many tensions alive and well today on earth, so many reasons pushing the international order towards all out violent conflict, the last thing we need is another reason for a shot to be heard around the word.? But that doesn’t mean that all conflict is or will be violent.

Let’s consider the last Cold Space War; what were the results?? Not only the conflict of 50+ years ago now result in the creation of entirely new field of technology and innovation, but it also actually led to the beginnings of the end of the Cold War itself!? There is little arguing that Neil Armstrong’s steps on the moon would not have happened (or at the very least not in the time and way that they did) without Sputnik or Yuri Gagarin’s first forays outside of the protective Earth.? And I would argue, just as important as the Eagle’s landing on the surface of the moon, was the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) which followed only a few short years later.

Isn’t that what is on the table here?? There are a lot of reasons to be concerned with the future of US-Chinese relations; not least of which being the strong possibility of conflict due to competition over the moon.? But for now, that conflict is philosophical, it is technological, it is a battle of ideals and systems, not a battle of bullets or cannon.? And as long as it stays that way, I for one look forward to the incredible ways that the ILRS and Artemis programs can (and hopefully will) push each other towards incredible accomplishments in space.

***The thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other organization or person regardless of employment or relationship.***