Will China or the USA Win the Space Race?

(5-6 minute read)

If Christopher Columbus returned today, what do you think he would regard as humanity's greatest achievement?

I don't think it would be skyscrapers, the internet or artificial intelligence.

I think he would look up, beyond the clouds and into space.

But… he would also wonder why we stopped.

For most of the last fifty years, human spaceflight has advanced more slowly than almost anyone expected. We landed astronauts on the Moon in 1969, yet no one has walked on another world since 1972. We've built remarkable space stations, explored every planet in our Solar System with robotic probes and even sent spacecraft beyond the edge of the Solar System itself. Yet in many ways, progress has felt surprisingly cautious.

Thankfully, I don't think the next twenty years will look anything like the last fifty.

For almost seventy years, space exploration has largely belonged to governments. Today, however, the race has become far more interesting. There are now three very different visions competing to shape humanity's future among the stars.

The first is the traditional government approach, led by NASA and its international partners.

The second is China's steadily expanding national space program.

The third is something entirely new: private entrepreneurs who believe space should become not just a place to explore, but a place to build businesses, industries and eventually communities.

Each has enormous strengths.

Each has significant weaknesses.

Most importantly, each could create a very different future.

NASA remains the benchmark against which every other space agency is measured. No organization has accumulated more experience in human spaceflight or deep-space exploration. The Apollo missions remain one of humanity's greatest engineering achievements, while the Mars rovers, the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope have transformed our understanding of the universe.

NASA's greatest strength has always been reliability. Missions are planned with extraordinary care, tested repeatedly and designed to minimize risk wherever possible.

The drawback is that caution is expensive.

Every additional safety review, every backup system and every design change adds years to a program and billions of dollars to its budget. That approach has produced remarkable successes, but it also explains why major projects sometimes seem to move at a snail’s pace.

China has chosen a very different route.

Rather than dramatic announcements or constant publicity, it has pursued a remarkably disciplined long-term strategy. Year after year it has quietly achieved another milestone. It has developed increasingly capable launch vehicles, landed robotic spacecraft on the Moon, returned lunar samples to Earth, operated its own permanent space station and announced ambitious plans for future lunar exploration.

If NASA represents caution, China perhaps represents persistence.

Its programs rarely appear rushed. Instead, they seem to follow carefully planned national objectives extending decades into the future. There is something quietly impressive about that consistency.

Its greatest challenge may not be technical.

One of the greatest strengths of space exploration has always been international cooperation. Scientists routinely share discoveries because knowledge benefits everyone. If the next era of exploration becomes dominated by geopolitical competition rather than collaboration, humanity risks losing some of that shared spirit of discovery.

Then there are the entrepreneurs.

I suspect historians may eventually conclude that they changed everything.

Unlike governments, entrepreneurs don't ask, "How do we complete the next mission?"

They ask, "How do we make thousands of missions possible and economically viable?"

That difference in thinking changes almost everything.

Elon Musk has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to accept spectacular failures in order to learn quickly. Watching one of his rockets explode can look alarming, yet every failure teaches engineers something that makes the next design better. It is a philosophy borrowed more from Silicon Valley than from traditional aerospace engineering: build quickly, test aggressively, learn from failure and improve continuously.

Jeff Bezos has taken a different approach, investing patiently through Blue Origin while focusing on lowering the long-term cost of access to space. Sir Richard Branson demonstrated that private companies could build viable commercial spaceflight businesses, even if his ambitions have been more modest than Musk's.

Private companies are prepared to accept risks that governments often cannot.

That willingness to move quickly has already produced one extraordinary achievement.

Reusable rockets.

Only a decade ago, most rockets were discarded after a single launch. Today, boosters routinely return to Earth, land upright and fly again. Imagine if every commercial airliner were thrown away after one flight. Air travel would be unimaginably expensive. Reusability changes the economics of space in exactly the same way.

Of course, there is another side to that philosophy.

Greater risk can also mean greater danger.

Governments answer to taxpayers. Private companies answer primarily to investors. Finding the right balance between speed, innovation and safety will remain one of the biggest challenges facing commercial spaceflight over the next two decades.

Perhaps the most fascinating question isn't simply who reaches Mars first.

It's what happens after they get there.

Suppose NASA leads the way.

I imagine Mars initially resembling Antarctica today: an international scientific outpost where research comes before commerce. Every mission would be carefully planned, every landing meticulously prepared and every expansion carried out cautiously. Progress would probably be slower than many people hoped, but it would also be exceptionally safe (for space travel).

Scientific discovery would remain the primary objective, with nations working together to understand an entirely new world before attempting to develop its resources.

Now imagine China reaches Mars first.

I suspect the picture would look rather different. China's space program has demonstrated an impressive ability to pursue ambitious national goals over many decades without being distracted by political cycles or changing priorities.

A successful Chinese Mars program would almost certainly become a source of enormous national pride while driving further investment into science, engineering and advanced manufacturing. The pace of expansion might be faster than many people expect, although access would probably remain closely tied to national priorities rather than becoming widely available to other countries or private organizations.

Now consider a third possibility.

What if the entrepreneurs arrive first?

I think this is where the future begins to change dramatically.

Governments naturally think in terms of missions. A government asks, "How do we send another expedition?"

Entrepreneurs think in terms of markets. A business asks, "How do we do more of this. Where do we expand next?"

History suggests those are very different questions with very different outcomes.

When private companies transformed aviation, flying gradually changed from something reserved for governments, the military and the wealthy into something millions of ordinary people now take for granted. I wonder whether space could eventually follow the same path.

If launch costs continue falling, private research stations could begin operating in orbit. Hotels may appear around the Moon. Manufacturing could move into weightlessness, producing materials impossible to create on Earth. Mining companies may start surveying near-Earth asteroids, not because they are interesting scientifically, but because they contain extraordinary quantities of valuable metals and, perhaps even more importantly, water.

Water may eventually become one of the most valuable resources in space. It is not only drinking water but can also be separated into hydrogen and oxygen, creating rocket fuel and breathable air.

Instead of launching every kilogram of fuel from Earth, future spacecraft could refuel in orbit or on the Moon before continuing deeper into the Solar System. Suddenly, journeys that appear impossibly expensive today begin looking commercially viable.

The asteroid belt itself contains enough raw materials to support human civilization for centuries. The first companies to learn how to extract and process those resources may become some of the most valuable businesses in history.

Of course, there is another possibility, and in many ways, I hope history remembers it above all the others.

Perhaps nobody really wins, or everybody does.

Throughout the Space Age, humanity's greatest achievements have often combined competition with cooperation. The Apollo program was driven by national rivalry. The International Space Station became one of the greatest examples of international scientific collaboration ever attempted. Competition encouraged innovation, while cooperation ensured that knowledge was shared.

I hope we follow that pattern again.

Imagine astronauts from America, China, Europe, Japan, India and many other nations standing together on the surface of Mars, not as rivals claiming territory, but as explorers representing the whole of humanity. Competition may get us there first, but cooperation could determine what happens next.

As a science fiction writer, I find all this enormously exciting because the future is beginning to resemble the books I grew up reading.

The biggest surprise may not be who reaches Mars first. It may be how quickly everything accelerates afterwards.

The first permanent settlement. The first asteroid mine. The first factory operating in orbit. The first tourist hotel circling the Moon. The first child born beyond Earth. Every one of those milestones will make the next one seem a little less extraordinary, just as powered flight, television and the internet gradually became ordinary parts of everyday life.

Progress rarely moves in a straight line. For years it can seem frustratingly slow, then suddenly everything changes. Aviation, computers and artificial intelligence all reached tipping points where decades of steady progress became years of astonishing acceleration. I have a feeling that space exploration is approaching one of those moments.

For thousands of years, every human being who has ever lived has shared one thing in common. We were all born on the same small planet, orbiting the same ordinary star.

I suspect our grandchildren may become the first generation in history for whom that is no longer true.

When that day comes, historians may look back on the 2030s as the decade when humanity finally stopped being a one-planet civilization.

And perhaps they'll conclude that the greatest achievement of our age wasn't simply building bigger rockets or reaching Mars.

It was having the courage to take the first step.

I hope I'm still around to see it.

Till next time,

Brian

BA Gillies
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