The agreement to create and cooperate on a permanent Moon base was signed on March 9 between the two national space agencies. This leaves the rest of the world’s space ambitions well behind the eight ball in so many ways.
Both nations have the capacity to deliver the support infrastructure and high-end tech to deliver on this agreement. That’s not in dispute. The agreement is particularly useful to both parties in that they’ll be able to share costs and spread the load of a high-maintenance base quite effectively.
The real impact of this agreement will first be felt on Earth by Russia and China’s competitors in space. A similar agreement between the United States and the European Union and perhaps Japan would be the rough equivalent. The problem with that idea is that no joint project is even being mentioned at this stage.
Some history
In the old days of the Space Race, beating the Soviet Union was a top priority. The nightmare scenario was showcased in Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent, when the Soviet Union landed on the Moon before the US. The United States made a conscious effort to overhaul and beat the Soviet Union to avoid exactly that scenario. The book is now famous for its gay issues; the final twist in the plot, the politically-obsessed US being overtaken by the Soviet Union, is usually ignored entirely.
(Another analogy, largely because I can’t resist – According to the Moon landing skeptics, the landing never happened. …But Russia and China can establish a permanent base there and that’s not in any kind of dispute, right? Well, you cretins?)
The US space program fizzled out to a large extent partly due to Congressional idiocy, mindless bean-counting, and total failure to recognize the value of space tech. Most of what you now use for daily life has some association with the early space tech, from frypans to touch screens and any number of materials. The intellectual property value alone of those materials could have doubled the funding of the space program, but …meh.
Strategy in space
What use is a Moon base, you ask?
1. It’s a staging area for mining, exploration, and development of off-world facilities.
2. It can be used to launch a mission to Mars and elsewhere.
3. It can access energy sources on the Moon like He 3, the supposed fusion “miracle energy” of future centuries. That could also mean controlling the future energy market, by the way, bozos.
4. It means the Russians and Chinese have direct access to space without the Earth’s gravity. That means multiple efficiencies built into anything they do up there.
5. The military aspect could be anything and everything. What can you put on the Moon? Anything you can get there.
The U.S. – Muppets in Space or worse?
The United States has been so defocused on real-world politics that its technological advantages have eroded severely. (Let’s not assume they’ve lost all tech advantages, but the public image is truly unbelievably lousy right now.) The science is still good, but the political side is a crap festival of total senility on all levels.
These new competitors aren’t the clunky old Soviet Union and mindless Maoists. The US seems to have totally ignored the “tech creep” aspect.
The issues are:
1. Can or will the US match this base?
2. If not, why not?
3. Is ceding control of the Moon to competitors such a great move?
4. What soul-searching, if any, will be required to get NASA back on track?
5. Will scattergun space exploration be replaced by something focused with purpose and direction, yes or no?
If nothing happens, Space Race v2.0 is basically lost already. The US will simply be a historical participant. Kermit and Miss Piggy would have done a far better job of keeping the show on the road over the last few decades.
Let’s also clarify:
• Incoherence and vague integration is no longer an option for the US space program on any level.
• US credibility, current and future, is definitely on the line. This is not a drill. It’s put up or shut up time, right now.
• Babble from political lunatics will be particularly unwelcome; even more so than the recently intolerable crapfest, and that ain’t good.
• The current business model has a 50-50 chance of working at all. Corporate contractors can deliver what they can deliver. They can’t deliver things they know nothing about. That’s a huge gap to fill at very short notice.
History is the world’s longest-running horror story. If you’d like to be horrified, now’s the time. Just bear in mind this situation should never have arisen at all.
