EDITORIALS

China heads for the moon

Staff Writer
The Providence Journal

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite. Sputnik spurred America to action, and the Space Race began in earnest. It was a race that the United States would win: Little more than a decade later, in 1969, America put a man on the moon.

It’s doubtful that China’s launch of the Chang’e-4 probe last week will have a similarly galvanizing effect on the American public or its political leadership. But perhaps it should.

The Chang’e­-4 represents a significant scientific milestone. It will land an unmanned rover on the far side of the moon — the side that never faces the Earth — which is largely unexplored. The potential for discovery is awesome.

The probe’s relay satellite, moreover, will reside in a higher orbit than is standard for satellites, a move towards potentially opening up vast new corridors of space for human use. That, as Heritage Foundation scholar on China Dean Cheng notes, “would exacerbate demands on the U.S. Air Force, NASA, and other U.S. space agencies to keep track of all the various space objects and systems in orbit. The U.S. Air Force Space Command, for example, is already heavily burdened as it seeks to maintain surveillance over some 24,000 objects in space on a 24-hour basis.” It is thought too that these higher orbits have potential to revolutionize communications in space.

In other words, Beijing is taking significant steps to increase its presence in the final frontier. Chinese president Xi Jinping is pushing to triple China’s investment in space. In 2016, China for the first time launched more rockets than Russia. James Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNBC last year that China’s space ambitions have a geopolitical message. "It's escaping what they would call the domination of the West and the U.S. It's a way to assert China's independence and a return to the global stage. It sends a message: We're a great power." That China is a brutal totalitarian state makes this message all the more disturbing.

In the United States, meanwhile, publicly funded space exploration has become something of an afterthought at best. NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011. Since then, U.S. astronauts headed to the International Space Station have had to hitch a ride on a Russian rocket. Privately funded space ventures like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic can pick up some of the slack, but they mostly promise lavishly expensive space tourism for the super rich. They are not part of a strategic plan to ensure the U.S. dominates the next phase of space exploration. Neither, really, is President Donald Trump’s call for “Space Force.” Mr. Trump has characteristically shown no follow-through on the idea.

Space exploration summons the best of Americans’ energy, as President John F. Kennedy said in his famous speech pushing for a moon landing in 1962. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade ... because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win,” he said.

It’s difficult to imagine a present American political leader showing similar commitment today.