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A New Space Race Has Just Started, But This Time The Stakes Are Far Higher
China could derail NASA’s lunar plans.
It’s 1957, and “Rock Around the Clock” is on repeat on every radio station in the US. Then, all of a sudden, the music stops and is replaced by a terrifying announcement. The Soviet Union has launched Sputnik 1, and its orbit path sends it directly over the US mainland. Citizens are now worried about the Soviets spying on them like an omnipresent eye in the sky. But the US isn’t about to let this blatant display of power go unchallenged, so it decides to fight back, and the original Space Race is born. Unsurprisingly, the United States then won the race in the years that followed with its incredible Apollo lunar missions. After the dust settled from this monumental race, the Outer Space Treaty laid the groundwork for our more cooperative, less politically charged modern space industry to flourish. But now, in 2023, a threat from the East has introduced the risk of a modern-day space race, only this time, rather than political pride being at stake, it’s the entire future of human space exploration and colonisation. Welcome to the lunar base space race.
This Eastern threat comes from China, whose space programme has been making considerable gains over the past few years. In fact, China is planning to build a permanent…
