Long March-5 Y7 rocket carrying a communications technology experimental satellite launched from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in southern China’s Hainan Province, February 23, 2024. Credit – Xinhua News Agency via Getty; 2024 Xinhua News Agency
R.There are approximately 6,800 miles between humanity’s past and future on the lunar surface. This is the approximate distance between the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first touched down on July 20, 1969, and Shackleton Crater at the south lunar pole. The area around Shackleton is where astronauts from the United States and possibly taikonauts from China (from the Chinese word “taikong,” meaning space or cosmos) will land during or before 2030, taking advantage of local ice deposits. It is harvested for water, breathable oxygen and even rocket fuel.
To hear the United States say this, we will be the first to land. “The phrase I hear around NASA is, ‘We want to be there to greet them when they come,'” says Howard McCurdy, professor emeritus of public administration and policy at American University.
If the space agency pursues the idea of flying the Artemis II crew on a looping journey around the far side of the moon late next year and landing the Artemis III crew in the south polar region in 2026 or 2027, the next boat will print: The moon will be truly American. But don’t count on it.
NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket has flown only once in late 2022. Although it successfully sent a crewless Orion spacecraft on a 26-day lunar orbital mission, subsequent analysis found that the rocket was shedding foam much like the shuttle Columbia did during its journey. It was launched in 2003; a takeoff anomaly that led to the catastrophic loss of the shuttle during its return to the atmosphere. Meanwhile, Orion’s heat shield could not fully withstand 5,000°F reentry fires long enough for the spacecraft to be considered safe to carry crew. What about the robot that landed on the moon? NASA has placed it in the hands of SpaceX to provide the 21st century version of the Apollo program’s lunar module; SpaceX plans to build the spacecraft from a modified version of the upper stage of its Starship rocket (a rocket that has not yet been launched). A completely successful flight.
After all, there is money. NASA’s fiscal 2024 budget is $24.875 billion; this represents a small cut from its $25.4 billion allocation in 2023. During the Apollo era, when the United States landed on the moon’s surface eight years after a static start in 1961, space spending peaked at about 4% of the federal budget; now it is 0.4%.
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“If you don’t have the money, your program will fail,” says Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. No one believes we will return to the 4% glory days, but we don’t need to be there to hit the 2027 target. “ [inflation adjusted] The $29 billion or $30 billion we had in 1999 is where we need to be now,” Pace says.
But even this relatively modest increase does not appear to be imminent, leaving China with a wide berth. As SpaceNews reports, on February 26, Beijing released its space Blue Book detailing its plans for 2024 and beyond, and they’re equal parts impressive and ambitious. The country’s state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), a Fortune 500 company, is planning a total of 70 launches in 2024, working hand in hand with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) (China’s NASA). 290 satellites, cargo ships and crewed spacecraft were placed into Earth orbit. There are 30 more launches in the manifesto of the emerging private sector.
Two different crews will fly in and out of China’s Tiangong (or Heavenly Palace) space station, and two uncrewed cargo flights will supply the outpost. Multiple launch facilities, including a sea-based spaceport off the coast of Haiyang and a commercial spaceport on Hainan Island, will enable the country to fly various versions of the Long March rocket, including the heavy-lift Long March 5, planned for four launches this year. years and can be used in both Earth orbit and deep space missions.
What attracts most attention in the West is the latter part of China’s space activity, particularly its planned flights to the moon. On March 24, the Queqiao-2 satellite entered lunar orbit, where it will begin coordinating the expected growth in communications traffic from the lunar surface. Later in the year, CASC plans to take advantage of this new radio infrastructure when it launches Chang’e-6, the first mission to return samples from the far side of the moon. In 2026, the Chang’e-7 orbiter, lander and rover will land on the moon’s south pole. Planned for 2028, Chang’e-8 will be a lander, rover and robot designed to test resource use (specifically ice harvesting and processing) and will eventually be operated from a crewed lunar base.
The Blue Book calls for the first taikonauts to land on the moon before 2030 and the establishment of an International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) within the following decade with multiple partners, including Russia, Belarus, Pakistan and South Africa. These timelines are unrealistic, according to experts in a position to speculate.
“There’s no question that the technology they have is very close to competing with us,” says Sean O’Keefe, NASA administrator from 2001 to 2005 and now a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. “Two years ago I wouldn’t have said this, but they’re making such progress. [the 2030] purpose can be considered.”
McCurdy adds: “We did this in eight years; “They can do it in six minutes.”
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Part of what makes China such a formidable force in reaching the moon is its command-and-control economics and policymaking. NASA’s goals change frequently with each new occupant of the Oval Office: Pres. Richard Nixon ended the Apollo program and replaced it with shuttles; Press. Ronald Reagan reduced NASA’s shuttle-centric focus and turned to building a space station; Press. George W. Bush put the United States back on the path to the Moon and also to Mars; President Barack Obama scrapped those plans in favor of an asteroid mission; Press. Donald Trump pulled the plug on the asteroid and brought the moon back to the agenda. None of this provides the kind of consistency that will allow the technology to be developed and built and achieve long-term goals.
China’s autocracy leaves such policy disarray aside, moving forward in half-decade increments, unchanged by its five-year serial plans. The current plan, which runs from 2021 to 2025, does not include a manned Moon landing because it is outside that time frame, but Beijing still met its 2030 goal.
“They have ambitions to do this,” Pace says. “People say the deadline is pretty ambitious, but they probably won’t do it. [try] unless they have high confidence in doing so. The political consequences of being wrong will be quite severe.”
As in the US, money plays an important role, but there is a lot to be gained in China. Officially, China’s space budget is much less than NASA’s, at $14.15 billion last year. But it’s the difference between “formal” and “informal” that makes the difference. The Chinese space sector is inseparable from the Chinese defense sector, and the same deep pockets that make China’s military the world’s largest are believed to provide a generous source of additional funding for the country’s space program even if Beijing does not open its books. for public inspection.
“They’re not very transparent about what they’re involved in and how much they’re spending,” O’Keefe says.
“Is China’s manned space program embedded within the military? I bet,” Pace says. “Is the military contributing to the manned space program? I am sure.”
None of this means that the lavishly established Chinese space program and the less well-funded American space program are in a race to reach the moon; At least it is not a situation similar to the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s. .
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“China is certainly not competing with the United States to get to the moon or anywhere in space,” Gregory Kulacki, China project manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told TIME in 2019.[China] I can’t win the race [it] “We already lost it 50 years ago.”
O’Keefe agrees: “No, it’s not a race,” he says. “Thank God, there is no parallel to what we experienced in the 1960s.” O’Keefe adds that China is taking its time. “The Chinese are very determined to move towards the existence of the Moon, and they have worked really hard over the last two decades to prepare for this.”
In some ways, China’s moon landing goal has actually had a positive impact on the US space program, allowing American policymakers to focus more on the country’s lunar presence than before, even if it is not in direct competition with China. “When they announced they were sending Chinese astronauts to the moon, we definitely became more interested in going to the moon,” McCurdy says.
But the lack of a true 21st century space race probably doesn’t mean we’ll take the next step and actually cooperate with China. The ILRS has a US-led counterpart in the Artemis Accords; So far, 36 countries have signed up to work with NASA on lunar exploration, contributing both hardware and crew members for an eventual lunar base. The model is in many ways similar to the 15-nation consortium that builds, maintains and crews the International Space Station (ISS). China is not part of this cooperation due to the Wolf Amendment, a 2011 US law that bans NASA from working with China without direct approval from lawmakers on Capitol Hill, in part due to fears of technological theft. Yet while the change is often framed as an absolute impediment to cooperation outside Earth, Pace sees it more as a speed bump.
“As a political symbol, the Wolf Amendment is fine,” he says. “But in practice, if there is a compelling project that we think is scientifically valuable (like environmental monitoring or data exchange), the only change NASA has to make is to notify Congress.” Congress could of course say no, but the amendment at least allows for a yes answer.
This could, in theory, open the door to a lunar rapprochement between Washington and Beijing; However, this may not be possible until economic and military tensions between the two global giants calm down. Much has been made of the idea that U.S. and Russian modern cooperation on the ISS and the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975 helped the two countries overcome Cold War hostility, but policy experts see it more as the opposite. — diplomacy on the ground leads to handshakes off planet.
“Space is a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator,” Pace says. As long as the United States and China have very different views on democracy, hegemony, and fundamental investment in an open society, we will likely be charting divergent paths in Earth orbit and toward the Moon. “It’s not just our machines or even our astronauts that we send into space,” says Pace. “These are our values.”
Write to: Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey.kluger@time.com.