KITE & KEY MEDIA: The world is entering its second age of exploration, this one in outer space. But there’s one big question: Will America get left behind? In the 21st century, America has seen enormous technological advances in outer space. At the same time, however, the public sector also seems rudderless. Should America return to the Moon? Should we bypass lunar missions altogether and focus on getting to Mars? The answer to those questions keeps changing. And while America vacillates, China is methodically working to overtake us as the world’s premier space power. Why does that matter? Because, at present, no one governs space – which means that whoever establishes dominance will likely have disproportionate power in determining what humanity’s future in the cosmos looks like. Full transcript:

It was an age of exploration. The world’s greatest powers striking out across vast distances, none of them sure what they would find. All they knew was that the future lay over the horizon, that things would never be the same once they arrived, and that getting there before their rivals could change the future of the world. And it all happened just a few years from now. Intro The history of space exploration can basically be boiled down to three eras. Awesome, boring, and then awesome again. During the Cold War, the race to the moon galvanized the country, led to enormous scientific breakthroughs, and culminated in an American flag on the lunar surface. Pretty amazing stuff. And then, well, gotta be honest here, we got bored. The last human walked on the moon in 1972, manned spaceflight started focusing more on important but unsexy scientific research, and the flame of exploration started to dim. Though in our defense, there were a lot of other important things demanding our attention at the time. In recent years, however, the romance of space has come roaring back. We’ve got reusable rockets, we’ve got a telescope that allows us to look billions of years into the past, and we’ve got private sector investment in space that grew from just $ 300 million in 2012 to over $ 10 billion by 2021. What we don’t necessarily have, however, is a plan. Here’s what we mean. While the private sector went blazing into the new space age, the public sector kept changing its mind. In 2005, the Bush administration announced plans to send humans back to the moon, establish a lunar base, and eventually continue on to Mars. Straightforward enough. Then, in 2010, the Obama administration reversed course, saying NASA’s goal should be Mars, with the president dismissing the idea of returning to the moon by saying, I just have to say, pretty bluntly here, we’ve been there before. Which went over like this. Then things changed again, with the first Trump administration reinstating the goal of starting with the moon, and with the Biden administration sticking to that plan. So at least we had some consistency. Although, in 2025, at the dawn of the second Trump administration, Elon Musk said, we’re going straight to Mars. The moon is a distraction. And to be fair, when it comes to distractions, this is pretty much the expert. But what’s going on here? Why is this such an intense debate? On the one hand, you can kind of understand why going back to the moon feels like a throwback. After all, the last time we were up there, it was about as retro as you could get. Grainy footage, primitive tech, white guys playing golf. By contrast, everything about Mars feels like the future. It requires spacecraft unlike any we’ve ever seen before, journeys deeper into space than any human has ever made, and the prospect of mankind setting foot on another planet for the first time in our history. Though, important caveat, no one knows if we can do it. At least anytime soon. But here’s the thing. We don’t have the luxury of setting our priorities in space based on what sounds the coolest. In the classic days of the space race, the US and the Soviet Union were competing for the prestige of being the world’s leader in space. While there were lots of practical benefits associated with that, the symbolism was perhaps the most important element. But today, the stakes are much bigger than just planting a flag. In large measure, that’s because of China. While Beijing came late to the space game, they’ve been making up for lost time. China didn’t put an astronaut into space until 2003, more than 40 years after the US and the Russians. But since then, they’ve built their own space station, put a rover on Mars, and become the first country to land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. Why does that matter? Because here’s the thing about the new space age. There are no laws. At least, not that everyone agrees on. That means that as better technology and lower costs make space more accessible than ever, it will also make space more competitive than ever. Because whichever country is the first to stake its claim gets the chance to set the rules. And when it comes to China, no one’s confident those rules will be fair. That’s the reason the former head of NASA said he didn’t want to see China land on the moon and say, this is ours, you stay out. And it’s the reason that one prominent space scholar warned that China might treat the moon the same way it treats islands in the South China Sea, where it claims an exclusion zone that prohibits all the other countries that say they have claims on that territory. And if that all sounds a little paranoid, you should know that the head of China’s moon program has compared the moon and Mars to the islands in the South China Sea. And this competition has led to the formation of rival camps aiming to shape the future of space. On one side is the U.S., which has brought 55 countries together as signatories to the Artemis Accords, a series of agreements that aim to preserve peace, promote international cooperation, and encourage scientific research in outer space. Not only has China not signed those accords, but it’s cobbling together a rival alliance for its International Lunar Research Station, which claims a permanent base on the moon by the 2030s. That’s a coalition that includes countries like Russia, Egypt, Pakistan, and Serbia. And if you’re wondering how Serbia can help in space, yeah, so is everybody else. But once you understand why the competition is so intense, you also understand why the choice between going to the moon or going to Mars turns out to be a false one. Because one of the reasons it’s important to return to the moon is because it could make getting to Mars way easier. One of the reasons the moon has become such a big prize is the discovery that the lunar poles have at least 600 billion kilograms of water in the form of ice. And the reason that’s important isn’t just because it’ll make it easier to sustain a long-term presence on the moon, it’s because the hydrogen and oxygen contained within that water can be used as rocket propellant, meaning we wouldn’t have to transport all the fuel necessary for a trip to Mars from Earth. And because the moon’s gravity is only one-sixth that on Earth, the moon becomes a logical springboard for journeys deeper into the galaxy. It’s also the case that the skills NASA is looking to develop to sustain a lunar colony, learning how to extract the ice, developing solar and nuclear power sources on the moon’s surface, and even learning how to fashion bricks out of moon dirt, could teach us valuable lessons that could be of use for sustaining life on Mars. And given that we’d be doing all of this three days away from Earth, rather than at least nine months away on Mars, the risks would be a lot lower. But here’s the most important thing to understand. This kind of progress in space is going to happen, with or without us. NASA estimates that the amount of human activity around the moon in just the next decade alone will be greater than all the activity that’s occurred there since the space age began in 1957. Which means we have to be there. And eventually that we have to be on Mars. Because the future of space is being decided. And if America isn’t the one to lead, well, we know what the implications are.

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