Louis Friedman
In the Senate hearing considering the confirmation of Jared Isaacman as NASA Administrator, he and Senator Ted Cruz engaged in extensive dialogue about China. They strongly expressed the view that the United States must get our astronauts back to the moon before the Chinese get theirs there. Isaacman expanded that goal to assert that we should work on sending humans to Mars at the same time.
The six-decade old idea of a space race with astronauts putting footprints on the moon is still with us. It is good for politics, but not good for space development or for national strategy. Whether for commercial concepts like resource mining, or for military strategy like cis-lunar dominance, or scientific purposes like a lunar far side observatory or moon base, activity will be largely robotic, characterized by advanced technology of augmented reality, telerobotics, quantum communications and artificial intelligence. And with robotic missions and progress to a moon base, the Chinese are leading. In this decade they have conducted two lunar sample returns with rovers, including one to the lunar far side. The U.S. has never done a robotic lunar sample return. China has also begun emplacement of the lunar communication infrastructure and initiated first steps in development of the planned International lunar research station. In that same time, the U.S. has cancelled its only planned lunar rover and conducted several attempted smallsat missions with new companies — only one of which has succeeded with a two-week mission.
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