Since Apollo 11 landed on the moon and returned to Earth, the American space program has been adrift. It's as if all the energy, focus, and passion that got America to the moon in 1969 escaped into the vacuum of space and has yet to be replaced by anything comparable.
The manned program today is a jobs program for congressional districts. The Space Launch System (SLS), which includes the Orion space capsule, has already cost more than $85 billion, and we're still two years from getting back to the moon.
Considering that every single deadline set for the SLS has been breached by a considerable amount, that two-year projection is a fantasy.
On the bright side, our unmanned missions exploring the sun, the stars, and the solar system have been one spectacular success after another. But there are few jobs or space-faring infrastructure to be built in favored congressmen's districts.
Lack of competent management, congressional game-playing, and presidents playing politics with space priorities have all contributed to the sorry state of the American space program.
In contrast, China has been singularly focused since 2006 on getting to the moon. It has a 2030 target date, though many experts believe it will get there sooner. The prize is not setting foot on the lunar surface. Instead, its goal will be to land on the moon's South Pole and build a base to exploit the resources that are there.
Why the South Pole? Water ice is present in abundance. Separate the hydrogen and oxygen, add a little methane, and you have powerful rocket fuel as well as fuel for lunar and Martian rovers, fuel for running a base, and a hundred other energy needs for a base in space.
As the U.S. has flailed, China and its partners have marched forward, notching one success after another. There is no reason to believe they will not be first to send a crewed mission to the lunar south pole, where only a half dozen or so promising regions exist to safely land. Depending on how the currently vague noninterference rules are interpreted and enforced by the Chinese (and others), significant parts of the moon might end up off-limits for anyone else to explore or mine. We do not know for certain how China might behave on the lunar surface—this is part of the conundrum—but terrestrial conflicts in the South China Sea and China’s regular infractions of sovereign airspace give scant rationale for optimism.
Would it be worth the time, effort, and money to beat China to the moon's South Pole and get a headstart on exploiting it? With so few good potential landing sites the old real estate mantra applies: location, location, location.
In the short run, the answer to whether it would be worth it is no. But 20 years from now when mining asteroids and the moon will be almost as cheap as taking them out of the earth's ground, a moon base will be more than worth its weight in gold.
The ultimate question is do we cooperate with China to exploit the moon's riches or do we compete for them in a take-no-prisoners, all-out war for dominance?
First, spacefaring nations need to start talking to each other, using science as a platform to establish dialogue. This has happened before. For example, during my more than six years at NASA, I had multiple meetings with Chinese leaders. We exchanged information about spacecraft orbits near the moon and Mars—no one is interested in collisions there that generate hazardous debris—and we had good discussions about science and data access. It’s true that some of these meetings were tougher than others to set up, but the point remains: science plays a unique role in space policy and international dialogue because of its clearly global nature; it can be a platform for interchange, assuming we can agree to the standard we want to adhere to.
I doubt whether China is interested in cooperating with the U.S. on anything, much less a prize like the moon. The Chinese are too single-minded and too focused to be in a sharing mood. I wouldn't be surprised if they attempted to interfere with any effort by the U.S. to set up our own base on the moon, especially if they get there first.
We're going to regret losing this race back to the moon.
