{"id":18313,"date":"2018-10-15T17:56:51","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T09:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/50-years-after-apollo-moonshots-will-rivalry-with-china-spark-a-new-space-race\/"},"modified":"2018-10-15T17:56:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T09:56:51","slug":"50-years-after-apollo-moonshots-will-rivalry-with-china-spark-a-new-space-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/50-years-after-apollo-moonshots-will-rivalry-with-china-spark-a-new-space-race\/","title":{"rendered":"50 years after Apollo moonshots, will rivalry with China spark a new space race?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_455301\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-455301\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-455301\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollo17-630x630.jpg\" alt=\"Apollo 17 flag\" width=\"630\" height=\"630\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollo17-630x630.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollo17-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollo17-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollo17-1260x1260.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollo17-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollo17.jpg 1658w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-455301\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA astronaut Harrison Schmitt stands next to the U.S. flag on the moon with Earth hanging in the black sky above during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. (NASA Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>WASHINGTON, D.C.&nbsp;\u2014 An American rivalry with China could stoke a new space race in the years ahead, prominent members of the space community said at a session marking the 50th anniversary of NASA\u2019s Apollo missions.<\/p>\n<p>But it may not play out the way the U.S.-Soviet space race did, said Scott Pace, executive secretary for the White House\u2019s National Space Council.&nbsp; Billionaire-backed space efforts such as Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin could play a leading role, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChina has billionaires, too,\u201d Pace said today at the ScienceWriters 2018 conference, held at George Washington University. \u201cChina has a growing commercial space sector that is not simply People\u2019s Liberation Army guys in new suits, but a commercial industry also emerging out there. And so they are not merely national security competitors, but they\u2019re also potential commercial competitors \u2014 as China is in many other areas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who became the 12th and last person to set foot on the lunar surface in 1972, voiced concern that America was already in \u201canother Cold War\u201d with China.<\/p>\n<p>Pace wouldn\u2019t go that far, however. Even though U.S. military and intelligence officials have voiced concern about the potential for China and Russia to target America\u2019s space assets, he said \u201cwe\u2019re not in a Cold War environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a global competition at stake, but it\u2019s a much more multidimensional competition than the Cold War was in the 1960s,\u201d Pace said. \u201cIt is happening on multiple levels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Apollo Plus 50: Past and future of America's space effort\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/heE7a6xs6QY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Pace and Schmitt agreed that the U.S. space effort has suffered under repeated strategy changes in the aftermath of the 2003 loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew, which led to the retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2011. The space program\u2019s objectives have shifted from a return to the moon, to a focus on near-Earth asteroids, to a heightened emphasis on Mars, and then to the current plan for moon missions that eventually point the way to Mars.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that humans haven\u2019t ventured beyond Earth orbit since Schmitt\u2019s mission in 1972 may have contributed to a sense that the glory days of America\u2019s space effort are long past, said Valerie Neal, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s National Air and Space Museum who specializes in space history.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are at least two new generations that have been born since the glory days of the 1960s, and they have no direct memory of that, no direct experience,\u201d she said. \u201cThe spaceflight that they have known during their formative years has been advertised as \u2018routine spaceflight.\u2019 It\u2019s been in Earth orbit rather than out in deeper space.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The increased commercial involvement in NASA\u2019s renewed push to cislunar space could change that. For example, NASA is expected to announce the first round of awards for commercial lunar payload services by the end of this year.<\/p>\n<p>The White House\u2019s current plan calls for handing over space operations in low Earth orbit to commercial ventures in the mid-2020s, freeing NASA to put the pieces in place for a moon-orbiting outpost known as the Gateway over the same time frame.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll see humans in orbit around the moon by 2024, and so, soon thereafter, we\u2019ll see humans on the surface,\u201d Pace said. That forecast echoes the timeline put forth by Pace\u2019s boss, Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the National Space Council.<\/p>\n<p>2024 meshes with Blue Origin\u2019s plans to have its Blue Moon lunar lander in operation by that time, as well as SpaceX\u2019s plans to have its BFR super-rocket ready to carry passengers around the moon and onward to Mars. NASA\u2019s heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket could be ready to go by that time as well, although the space agency\u2019s auditors reported last week that the SLS program was not in a good position to hit its schedule and budget targets.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_455307\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-455307\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-455307\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollotalk1-630x428.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Apollo Plus 50&quot; panel\" width=\"630\" height=\"428\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollotalk1-630x428.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollotalk1-768x522.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181015-apollotalk1-1260x856.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-455307\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scott Pace, executive secretary for the National Space Council, speaks during a panel discussion also featuring Valerie Neal, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum; and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Sch;mitt. Time Magazine\u2019s Jeffrey Kluger is the moderator. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Schmitt worried that NASA could well find itself lagging behind China. One questioner pointed to China\u2019s Chang\u2019e-5 mission to the moon, which is scheduled for next year and could be the first spacecraft to bring fresh lunar samples back to Earth since Schmitt\u2019s round trip in 1972.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s part of a very intense and major plan to occupy the moon,\u201d Schmitt said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t move faster than 2024, Scott, I think you\u2019re going to have Chinese boots on the moon before then.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why don\u2019t the U.S. and China work together? For years, Congress has limited bilateral contacts between U.S. and Chinese space officials, due to concerns about Chinese espionage. This month, however, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine met with the head of China\u2019s space program in Germany and floated some ideas for increased cooperation.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"callout clearfix\"><strong>Read more:<\/strong> Apollo 17 moonwalker stirs up a buzz with views on climate change<\/h4>\n<p>\u201cThe issue is not that there\u2019s a ban on cooperation,\u201d Pace said today. \u201cIt has to go through some very strict filters, and it has to be overseen, of course, by the Congress. So it can be done, but it requires approval.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If China does succeed in bringing lunar samples back for study, Pace said it might be possible to arrange a sample exchange program involving moon rocks and soil held by the U.S. and China as well as Russia. \u201cNothing has been ruled out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe problem with China, as in spaceflight generally, is in establishing levels of trust,\u201d Pace said.<\/p>\n<p>He pointed to the example of a Chinese lunar orbiter, apparently the Chang\u2019e-1 probe, which crashed into the moon\u2019s surface at the end of its mission in 2009. Pace said U.S. scientists put a lot of effort into plans to monitor the cloud of debris thrown up by the impact, but the Chinese didn\u2019t let them know in advance when and where the crash would come.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not the way to build trust,\u201d Pace said. \u201cSo, China has some great capabilities. There are some cooperative activities that we could engage in, and I want to engage in. But there has to be a reciprocal balancing with the scientific community.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>GeekWire aerospace and science editor Alan Boyle was the organizer of today\u2019s \u201cApollo Plus 50\u201d panel session at ScienceWriters 2018. He\u2019s also president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, one of the organizers of the annual ScienceWriters conferences.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA astronaut Harrison Schmitt stands next to the U.S. flag on the moon with Earth hanging in the black sky above during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. (NASA Photo) WASHINGTON, D.C.&nbsp;\u2014 An American rivalry with China could stoke a new space race in the years ahead, prominent members of the space community said at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1651,3463,135,2702,5145,625,190,1488,4933,5146],"class_list":["post-18313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-apollo","tag-apollo-17","tag-china","tag-deep-space-gateway","tag-harrison-schmitt","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-national-space-council","tag-sciencewriters","tag-scott-pace"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}