There's a race happening right now to take over outer space in the twenty first
century. The dominance of the United States over space exploration is being massively challenged
for the first time since their original contest with the Soviet Union back in the
nineteen sixties. And this new contender is not here to mess around. They
are making aggressive plans, and they are turning those words into actions and accomplishments.
A key point that NASA has struggled with for a long time now.
China has a much better chance of winning the space race than most Americans realize,
and this is something that we need to be talking about. This is
the space race. Let's start with the big one, the race to the
Moon. More specifically, this is a competition to see who can establish a
permanent base at the lunar South Pole, which is an area believed to be
flushed with critical resources such as water that would support a long term human presence
on the Moon. In one corner we have The Artemis Program is a joint
effort between the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe, among many
other smaller agencies who have signed onto the Artemis Accords, the newest of which
being India. Which is very important to note because just recently we watched India
successfully land the first robotic lander at the lunar South Pole. So this is
a powerful coalition of nations. Though let's not pretend that this isn't an American
first operation. The US wrote the Artemis Accords, and the entire program was
set into motion by President Trump in twenty seventeen. I somehow doubt that he
did much consultation with international partners before making that decision. Trump was also responsible
for formally establishing the United States Space Force, which is still a silly name,
but is actually something that was very much needed for this new era of
space competition. The US military has obviously been involved in the space program from
the very beginning, but by creating a dedicated branch focused on outer space activity
these it shows the world that this is something the US takes seriously, or
at least as serious as you can be taken with a name like Space Force.
I mean, imagine if we had called the Navy Water Force. Anyway,
if there's anything that can be said about Trump and his Vice President Mike
Pence, it's that they understood the consequences of being surpassed by China in the
space race. The US had become a sleeping hair while the Chinese remained a
fast approaching tortoise. Now, I want to go back to a quote from
Mike Pence that was said in March twenty nineteen, because it's as true now
as it was back then. Make no mistake about it. We are in
a space race today just as we were in the nineteen sixties, and the
stakes are even higher. What we need now is urgency. The United States
must remain first in space in this century as in the last, not just
to propel our economy and secure our nation, but above all, because the
rules and values of space, like every great frontier, will be written by
those who have the courage to get their first and the commitment to stay.
That sense of urgency expressed by Pence was spurred on by China's robotic moon landing
in January twenty nineteen changy four, which marked the first ever soft landing on
the far side of the Moon. China had shown the world that they could
do something in outer space that no one else had done before, and while
landing a robot on the Moon in the twenty first century might not sound like
such a massive accomplishment. Keep in mind that in the time since Changy four,
we've seen India, Japan, and now even Russia attempt to land their
own robotic missions and fail to even touch down successfully on the Moon. Every
attempt resulted in a crash, landing and destruction of the payload, until just
last week, when India succeeded on their second attempt, and to drive home
the fact that this was no fluke, China went on to succeed with Changy
five in November twenty twenty. This was a complex mission involving anbiter lander rover
and a sample return vehicle that launched moon rock into space and transported it back
to Earth. That was the first time people had returned a sample from the
Moon since the mid nineteen seventies, and what we've seen so far from the
Chinese is just the tip of their lunar iceberg. This is a plan that
China has been working on since two thousand and four, a three phase lunar
expansion program, and the current robotic missions are only phase one. We are
less than a year away from the launch of Changese six, which will be
China's second excursion to the far side of the Moon, and more significantly,
this mission will attempt the first ever sample return from the Moon's far side.
They're probably not going to discover something unknown over there. The only difference between
the two halves of the Moon is that one side is always visible from the
Earth and the other side is never visible from the Earth. Don't ask why.
It's kind of complicated, but the point is that, yet again,
China is doing something that no one else has done four and they're making damn
sure that everyone, especially the United States, can see them do it.
This will be followed up by Chang E seven in twenty twenty six, China's
most ambitious lunar mission, consisting of an orbiter, lander, rover and hopping
spacecraft designed to seek out water ice in permanently shadowed areas of the Shackleton Crater
at the lunar south Pole. The Chang E eight will launch two years after
that in twenty twenty eight and land nearby Chang E seven carrying a robot designed
to test three D printing bricks from lunar regolith. This marks the end of
China's Phase one lunar expansion. Phase two is where stuff gets real. In
the year twenty twenty nine, China is going to land their first crew of
taikonauts on the Moon. And I say that this is something China is going
to do and not something they are planning to do, because twenty twenty nine
will mark the eightieth anniversary for the People's Republic of China and there is no
doubt that the Chinese Communist Party will take this opportunity to make a colossal move
on the global stage. And like we've said before, this is something that
China has already planned out. There are three main components to a successful human
landing on the Moon, a heavy lift rocket, a crew vehicle, and
a lunar lander. We already know what these components are going to be in
the context of the Artemis program, the SLS, the Orion and the Starship.
China's heavy lift rocket of choice will be their upcoming Long March ten.
This vehicle is currently under development, with a scheduled test flight for twenty twenty
seven. Unlike their much more ambitious and experimental Long March nine concept, the
Long March ten leverages existing Chinese rocket technology, namely their y F one hundred
kerosene engine, and this should allow for the rocket to move rapidly from the
development phase to active service. Long March ten will be a ninety meter tall
three stage rocket that utilizes two liquid fueled side boosters in addition to a center
core booster, each of them fitted with seven of the y F one hundred
engines. So Long March ten is going to look and function very similar to
a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, with a capability to deliver twenty seven metric tons to
lunar orbit. China also has a plan to make the three booster cores reusable
by having them complete a propulsive landing, again very similar to a Falcon Heavy,
except instead of landing legs, China wants to catch the booster with a
system of tight rope like wire tethers. The next key component is known as
the NGCs, which stands for Next Generation Crewed Spacecraft, and this is essentially
a Chinese equivalent of NASA's Orion spacecraft that is being used for the Artemis missions.
The capsule supports a three person crew and includes a service module for power
and propulsion. While this vehicle is still in development, China began full scale
prototype testing as early as twenty sixteen. The third component is China's lunar Lander.
This will allow out two astronauts to reach the surface of the Moon and
then return to orbit again. This vehicle is also under development now because the
Long March ten will only be rated for twenty seven tons to lunar orbit.
The execution of this plan will require two separate rocket launches, one Long March
ten to send the crewed spacecraft and a second Long March ten to deliver the
lunar Lander. Then the two vehicles will rendezvous and doc in lunar orbit for
crew transfer. It's a pretty similar outline to the Artemis three mission profile.
Much like the old Apollo missions. The first Chinese stay on the Moon will
be relatively short, just around six to eight hours of exploration, sample collection,
and conducting experiments. This will include the use of an electric lunar rover
that will have ten kilometers of driving range. Now, I know what you
might be thinking, this China thing isn't really that big of a deal,
because NASA is going to be landing people on the Moon by twenty twenty five,
and they'll have a full Artemis Moon base in progress by the time China
even arrives, will they? Though I don't think there is any well informed
person in the space community who honestly believes that we are landing on the Moon
in twenty twenty five. The signs of progress are just not there right now.
SLS and o'rian have flown one test mission, which was very successful.
That's good. The SpaceX Starship, which is being counted on as our human
landing system, has also made one test flight which was not successful. That's
bad. Obviously, there's nothing easy about making a lunar capable super heavy lift
rocket, but if you were to put them on a spectrum, SLS would
be right around moderate difficulty level, while Starship is maxed out insanity levels of
difficult. Plus we've already seen the first NASA officials winding up to throw SpaceX
under the bus for delaying the Artemis three landing. NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free
recently hinted that Artemis three may have to go ahead without a Moon landing.
Free said that NASA might change the mission parameters to something more viable, and
NASA has grounds to be worried. SpaceX needs to figure out how to get
Starship into orbit, which is going to be very difficult, but they can
probably do it. Then they need to figure out how to get the gigantic
upper stage back down from space in one piece and stick the propulsive landing.
That's going to require the equivalent of a space miracle. Then SpaceX needs to
figure out their orbital gas station and tankership system. Then they need to build
a variation of the starship that can land on the Moon and keep two people
alive there for five days. Then they need to get that starship all the
way to the Moon and land on it. And then they need to do
that flawlessly enough that NASA decides it is safe to try again with people on
board. Now I'm not saying that that can't all be done in two years,
but it does sound fairly preposterous. So there is a non zero chance
that the Chinese will beat NASA to the first crewed moon landing of the twenty
first century. And in any sensible world, that shouldn't actually matter. We
as human beings should just be stoked that any person landed on the Moon.
That is amazing. But the current environment of global politics is not even the
least bit sensible, and it's going to be pretty bad for us as Western
people if China manages to win the biggest pissing contest of the twenty first century.
But the thing about all of this is that landing people on the Moon
one time does not actually matter. It's cool and stuff, but walking on
the Moon is a relatively inconsequential flex Just look at Apollo. The Americans walked
on the Moon a few times, and then they stopped, and then everything
went right back to the way it was before. The US failed to establish
a lasting presence on the Moon. But China will not make the same mistake.
That's why they've already mapped out a detailed plan for their own International Lunar
Research Station, also known as a moon base, announced in twenty twenty one.
The ILRS will begin construction in the twenty thirties and will be a fully
autonomous, robotic installation at the lunar South Pole. So the Chinese are going
to touch ground on the Moon in twenty twenty nine, just to show the
world that they can, and then they're going to spend the next decade using
robotic missions to stake their own permanent claim. Initially, this moonbase was supposed
to be a joint venture between China and Russia, but the whole Russia involvement
slowly started to fade away as the war in Ukraine intensified, and now in
August twenty twenty three, as the Russians attempted to prove their worth by landing
on the Moon again for the first time in fifty years, they actually ended
up highlighting just how far their space agency has fallen with the catastrophic failure of
their Lunar twenty five rover, So the idea that the Russians would play a
major supporting role in the construction of ILRS unlikely at this point. China has
already far surpassed any capability that the Russian or Soviet space program ever had even
at their peak. In a recent update to their plan for the International Lunar
Research Station Initiative, China Space Agency announced that they are actively recruiting new member
countries to join in their future plans to colonize the Moon. So instead of
a partnership between two great powers, the ILRS concept is now expanded to include
Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and the Asia Pacific Space Cooperation, which
includes Turkey, Mongolia, Thailand, Peru, Iran, and Bangladesh. China
claims that there are an additional ten countries and organizations currently in negotiation to join
the initiative, among them being Malaysia and Venezuela. The irs will be completed
over the course of five missions in the twenty thirties, and this is going
to require the development of China's Long March nine rocket, essentially their own equivalent
of these Starship super heavy Long March nine was first imagined a decade ago as
a conventional super heavy lift rocket, basically just a much bigger version of the
current Long March five. But then China saw what SpaceX had done with the
Starship and they immediately pivoted Long March nine to follow the same formula. The
new Long March nine comes in two varieties, a three stage rocket optimized for
deep space exploration, and a two stage heavy lifter to low Earth orbit.
Stage one consists of a nine meter diameter booster with thirty methane fueled engines,
each delivering two hundred tons thrust, So that's not quite as much power as
a starship, but it's pretty damn close. The main difference here is that
instead of one gigantic upper stage like Starship, Long March nine will have a
second stage with two of the methane engines to send the payload into orbital velocity,
and then the third stage will have a vacuum optimized hydrogen engine to achieve
the translunar injection orbit. So overall, Long March nine will be less powerful
than Starship, but also much lighter. It won't have the same mass to
orbit capability, but Long March nine will not require orbital refilling to reach the
Moon. There are five ilrs landing scheduled between twenty thirty one and twenty thirty
five, each deploying a component of the future moon base. ILS one establishes
the command center with basic energy and telecommunications facilities. Mission two brings lunar research
and exploration facilities. Mission three is all about in situ resource utilization technology.
Mission four puts all of that into use with a robotic exploration and experiment mission
complete with a distributed sample collection and return, and then Mission five will establish
lunar based astronomy and Earth observation capabilities. When this is all said and done,
the Chinese will have one hell of a Moon base for themselves, and
they're growing host of international partners to begin advanced human operations on the Moon and
at the same time NASA is proposing to do something with their Artemis program.
This is the worrying point. Aside from the construction of their orbital Gateway station,
which is awesome, NASA hasn't really provided the same level of detail on
just how they are going to go about creating their own Moon base. And
as we've seen, anytime NASA does try and make a plan, it almost
immediately false apart and gets delayed, modified, and confused. And this is
kind of the way that NASA has always been. The US tendency to ping
pong back and forth between democratic and republican governments means that the people in charge
are never on the same page for more than eight years at a time,
and even within those election cycles, priorities can change drastically from year to year.
So here's the thing. I think most of us can agree that authoritarian
dictatorships are bad. Like in general, it's a bad way to run a
country and govern people, at least in my opinion, But when it comes
to making very complex and expensive, long term plans like colonizing the Moon and
actually following through with them, we've got to admit that an authoritarian model like
the Chinese Communist Party does have a clear advantage in this area. So there
is a very real chance that the Chinese will win this new space race in
this decade, and we've got to at the very least start preparing ourselves for
whatever the consequences of that power shift might be