A somewhat unflattering split-screen unfolded in space this weekend as high-profile launches by the United States and China ended, respectively, in failure and success. At least for now. The first crewed test flight for Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule, meant to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station, was scrubbed for the second time and rescheduled for tomorrow. Meanwhile, China’s Chang’e 6 mission successfully planted an unmanned lander on the far side of the moon Saturday evening. (To be a full success, it still needs to safely return to Earth sometime later this month.) For the moment, at least, China can boast that its heavy-handed use of state capacity to direct its space program has achieved a better result than the United States’ more laissez-faire, contractor-friendly approach. The high-tech geopolitical competition that now characterizes the relationship between the world’s two great powers — and maybe humanity’s future in space — could depend on which one comes out on top. “China’s governmental space program, as demonstrated by Chang’e, just rolls forward,” said Greg Autry, director of the Thunderbird Initiative at Arizona State University and liaison to NASA for former President Donald Trump’s 2016 transition team. “It's not super ambitious, or super fast, but it has a clear mandate and schedule and executes on it in a way that we don't really see NASA programs succeeding at right now.” (If it seems unfair to compare the U.S.’ more utilitarian, ISS-focused Commercial Crew Program with China’s national-priority moon efforts, keep in mind that America’s Artemis program, aimed at putting astronauts on the moon for the first time since the 1970s, is also experiencing considerable delays.) Compared to China, which has only a small private-sector space industry mostly spawned from its People’s Liberation Army, the U.S. has a sprawling aerospace industry populated by old-school institutional giants like Boeing, newcomers backed by tech fortunes (Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin) and a smattering of smaller startups. Like China’s model, which has its own strengths (fewer political considerations, more top-down control) and weaknesses (a lack of transparency or innovation), America’s economic and regulatory approach to space exploration presents a series of tradeoffs. Take Starship, SpaceX’s reusable rocket, which Musk has said will someday transport humans to Mars. As part of the Artemis program, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.89 billion contract in 2021 to use Starship to transport astronauts to and from the moon. It is the tallest rocket ever built, and according to Stanford University to reach low Earth orbit it will take the amount of energy that 680 people use over the course of an entire year. Musk has said he wants each one produced to fly more than 1,000 times per year. “Starship is magnificent, but maybe a complex solution for a relatively simple problem,” Autry said. In other words, both the massively, perhaps overly ambitious undertaking of Starship, and the incremental follies of Starliner (or the weird pathos of Intuitive Machines’ February lunar landing), are simply part of the territory when a nation is willing to cede as much control over its outer-space travel to the private sector as the United States. Despite the temporary setback for Boeing and NASA, U.S. tech boosters like Autry or the American Enterprise Institute’s Todd Harrison generally believe that even America’s failures along the way ultimately contribute to a more dynamic and innovative space ecosystem that can compete with China in the long run. “The U.S. mission (a private company launching astronauts into space on a commercial launch vehicle) is something China has never done,” Harrison noted in an email. “It means the United States has advanced so far in its space capabilities that these more mundane tasks, like launching astronauts, can be bought as a commercial service… To pull ahead, they have to out-innovate us.” Autry said that he believes “Starliner will fly,” but acknowledged that when it comes to mega-ambitious plans like putting permanent human habitats on the moon, the nation faces the kind of serious competition it hasn’t in space since the Cold War. “It’s a race right now,” he said, and right now China is looking quicker: “They’re rolling forward as our dates slip back and back.”
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