How America Can Win the New Space Race

By Alexander Wiliam Salter

Tuesday, June 18, 2024

 

The ongoing competition between the U.S. and China is the defining geopolitical event of our time. International finance and trade, the status of Taiwan, and energy security are some of the hot-button contests both sides want to win. Yet the struggle with the most far-reaching implications may well occur not on Earth but above it. The next decade will be critical for both nations in establishing outer-space dominance.

 

We’re experiencing a clash of political-economic models for space. America favors respect for norms, free enterprise, and open scientific exploration. China, in contrast, promotes the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) brand of quasi-fascistic state capitalism, authoritarianism, and raw power projection. For the well-being of our citizens, as well as all mankind, we must ensure America wins the new space race.

 

The Trump administration oversaw the beginnings of a second American space age. The president revived the National Space Council, with the vice president chairing and taking a serious interest. Executive orders bolstered space commerce by protecting the use of space resources, like mining the Moon and asteroids. Under the guidance of NASA’s capable and savvy administrator, Jim Bridenstine, America’s space agency took important steps to return to the Moon. Most importantly, Bridenstine, with support from the State Department, spearheaded the creation of the Artemis Accords, a set of cooperative principles for nations of goodwill to explore and profit from space.

 

These initiatives were so successful that the Biden administration has largely retained them. Yet President Biden hasn’t made winning the new space race a national priority. While he didn’t reverse major Trump space initiatives, neither has he advanced them. His NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, is competent but lacks Bridenstine’s unique blend of vision and administrative skills.

 

Meanwhile, China is ramping up its efforts. Its space program has advanced by leaps and bounds in the past ten years, and it has credibly committed to a manned lunar mission by 2030. Its International Lunar Research Station, designed as a counter to the Artemis Program, includes plans for a moon base. Russia and Venezuela, hardly models of freedom, have joined in. The Artemis Accords coalition now has more than 40 nations, many with impressive space capabilities, but China and Russia together could seriously threaten American space security.

 

There’s no question about China’s long-term intentions. The CCP views space not as an opportunity for collaborative human flourishing, but a means of solidifying legitimacy at home and increasing its power abroad. Scott Pace, who served as executive secretary of the National Space Council under President Trump, warns that China’s cooperative overtures are really a bid for control: As with “the Belt and Road Initiative, space cooperation tends to be on terms solely determined by China.”

 

We need to take China’s space threat seriously and to solidify America’s lead in the new space race. What’s required is a plan for space that combines the national interest with global responsibility. At minimum, the government should:

 

·         Persuade more nations to sign the Artemis Accords.

·         Continue consulting and partnering with our cutting-edge space businesses such as SpaceX.

·         Prepare for the impending retirement of the International Space Station, which will occur no later than 2030. America should embrace a model blending market supply of a new habitat with government demand on a tenancy basis. We can’t afford to relinquish a permanent presence in low-earth orbit, especially since China has had one since 2021.

·         Elevate the Office of Space Commerce within the Department of Commerce and have its leader report directly to the Secretary of Commerce.

·         Provide more resources, in the form of greater inflation-adjusted funding, to NASA, the Space Force, and the Office of Space Commerce.

·         Seriously consider investments in satellite redundancy to ensure hostile nations cannot cripple us, militarily or commercially, with a first strike on our space assets.

 

All of this must occur in the context of a high-level strategy that treats China not as a well-meaning but mistaken partner to be brought back into the fold, but as a rival whose ambitions must be thwarted.

 

In the contest over basic governance models for space, there’s no prize for second place. We run the risk of losing the gains we made from 2016 to 2020, not from a reversal of policy but through a loss of momentum. The American public must demand their leaders get serious about winning in space.