Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: Is there really a space race between the US and China?

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

Is the United States really in a new space race with China? Or is that framing missing the bigger picture? In this Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, sits down with Patrick Besha, former NASA strategic advisor on China, to explore the realities behind China’s rapidly advancing space program. They discuss how China’s political system shapes its long-term space strategy, why the rhetoric about a “space race” may be misleading, and how competition between the United States and China in space is likely to unfold over the coming decades. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/spe-us-china-space-raceSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome to the space policy edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreyer, the host and also Chief of Space Policy here at the Planetary Society. This month, I am very excited to host somebody I've wanted to have on the show for a long time. Dr. Patrick Bisha was a strategic advisor at NASA for many years. He is also the founder of the Global Space Group. He's an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, just an overall general expert in space policy. But his particular expertise is quite relevant these days. He was previously the overall lead for Asia, particularly China and India,

in the Office of International and Interagency Relations at NASA. And he has a lot of long time understanding and depth of research in China, in China's space program, and of course, Mandarin, he speaks Mandarin in the language, it's done quite an extensive amount of work in that area. He was recently testifying before the House of Representatives in the fall of 2025 on the role of China's space ambitions and the relative decisions that the United States should make or not in relation to those. It's probably understating it a bit to say that China's pretty important.

to overall U.S. space policy these days. We have seen in the last few years an increasing amount of rhetoric about China as a geopolitical rival that must be met or matched in space capability in the United States. And it has basically set the current schedule for Artemis in terms of trying to land American astronauts or American allies and astronauts onto the surface of the moon before China, which is widely expected to occur sometime around 2030, possibly earlier, possibly later. I have a lot of broad issues with geopolitical framing, to be honest. I understand that there is a geopolitical dynamic and great power competition, but I look back

to Apollo and I tend to worry that framing this too much of a race is great for the lead-up. It helps you get there faster. It helps unlock resources. It helps establish political priority. But the problem with the race mentality, which we saw on Apollo, in which I should note, Artemis was expressly designed to avoid, was the endpoint. Now, once you have won, it's very hard to sustain that level of investment overall. It's also profoundly unfair in some ways to NASA, which, despite the race rhetoric, has not been funded in any way to reflect a geopolitical priority in the United States. The funding for even just Artemis or the

elements of Artemis have been at best slow and steady over the past 10 years, as opposed to the rapid spike of funding for Apollo. We are relying primarily on commercial entities to make up the difference from what the government is willing to invest in what has now become, apparently, a priority for U.S. national interest. These may work, but it is a very different way of approaching it. So I want to dive into this role. Is China even in a race with the United States from their perspective? What are their capabilities?

What are the consequences if China gets to the moon first? And of course, we'll expand this out to what NASA does in space science and what China does in space science. And if that's even consistent with the race mentality. Before we do that, of course, I need to make the pitch. If you're a listener and enjoy the show or the other work that the Planetary Society does, I hope you are also a member, or at least a donor, to the Planetary Society. We are an independent nonprofit.

That means that everything we do is enabled by individuals across the world. We don't have big corporate money. We don't have government grants. That has actually been very helpful in the last year or so because we are independent. We can say what we want. We can focus on the important. things that we share, the values that we share, space science, exploration, optimism, the future, and how we approach this together. Planetary Societies at planetary.org slash join if you want to

join us as a member or just the website, of course, on all the social media channels. Again, if you like this show, consider joining. And if you are a member, thank you very much. You enable us to do this job. And consider upgrading your membership and helping us do an even better job. We are, if I may say, working real hard these days to make sure that space science remains one of the priority capabilities that we do, not just the United States, but around the world. And now, Dr. Patrick Bisha. Patrick Bisha, thank you for joining the space policy edition of Planetary Radio. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Is China in a great power competition with the United States? And if they are, are they actually competing and racing us to the moon? Or is it just us thinking that they're doing that? Well, I think we are in a strategic competition, the U.S. and China. I think a lot of the rhetoric about a space race has really been coming from the United States. You don't hear quite as much at, say, a leadership level regarding a space race in China, but they are closely watching what we do in space. They're watching the advances that NASA's making the Aramis program, and carefully paying attention to, you know, every step along the way. So there is a competition, and they're well aware that there's a competition,

but the rhetoric is less heated than it is in the United States. Why do you think that is? Why is that rhetoric lower? I mean, almost from an outsider perspective that I have, you can almost argue that they're just doing their program, and it's the United States who's being quite reactionary to it. But I know that it's not as open of a society. so you don't see those levels of debates.

Are they executing a plan pretty much as designed years ago, or have they changed in reaction to what the United States has done at any point in terms of space? At least in again, we're civil space. Yeah, so two things. So they are executing a plan that was largely formulated a decade ago in some cases. Certainly with the lunar program, some of the major elements of it were formulated two decades ago. In terms of human spaceflight, this started in about 1992. And so it's even longer time ago that they first envisioned having a space station and things like that.

So in a lot of ways, it is kind of a methodical movement forward in a longstanding plan. I think another way to look at it, however, is that, you know, China historically has not publicized a lot of their missions, far in advance, and kind of kept it fairly quiet. This includes even major launches of the human spaceflight program. And, you know, in part, this is perhaps because they didn't want to lose face or they didn't want it to become a sensitive issue or a political issue. And so I think there's an aspect of that at play here as well. However, I do think they're becoming very confident in their mission to land the Chinese astronauts on the surface of the moon. We're hearing continuing progress updates and more discussion about this upcoming mission and series of missions actually. Is this actually like a stated public goal or is this all inferred in terms of the human landings?

Because it's obviously progressing in that direction, but I've been hard-pressed to actually see it. And again, I just may have missed it. And this is one of the challenges of following this. Like, is this a public goal that they will land astronauts by a certain date? It is. Okay. It's a stated goal. And it's been stated by the China Ambien Space Agency, among others.

Yes. So let's go back to the origins. I mean, so the Chinese political system. is, would you call it unique, relatively unique in the, I mean, current global order in terms of its communist, but also has strong kind of capitalist undertones. You did a lot of research in this and, you know, talked about there's like these kind of diffused, or there are people, what is it called, diffused authoritarianism or fragmented authoritarianism, summarize kind of just like what kind of system is producing this and what kind of processes need to happen

to kind of coalesce around this idea of sending astronauts, or giving. Chinese astronauts onto the surface of the moon. And how does that compare to kind of our process in the United States in terms of what is guiding that and what enables that to survive over time? Yeah. So, you know, I do think China has a unique system. And a lot of that's just by historical circumstance. You know, you mentioned a term of our fragmented authoritarianism.

And this is an idea that, you know, some China scholars, Kenneth Liebertoll and Michael Oxenberg developed back in the 1980s studying energy policy in China. The idea here was that you had several bases of power, of sources of authority in the Chinese system. There was the party, the Communist Party of China, there was the military, and then there was what we might call the state, the state government. And it was the interplay between these various high-level sources of authority that kind of yielded decisions and policymaking. And then within those, you also had various lines of authority. So you had within the state, you had ministries.

Within the party, you might have party officials in charge of provinces. And then you had things like state-owned enterprises. And these three centers also buy for power and the ability to make decisions. And so this system largely exists today. It was an observation that it kind of formulated decades ago, but by and large, it's a very useful way to explain. the political system in China. And so that's, this is kind of how space policy is made in China. This is fairly different from the U.S. I would say, R. and I would argue it's completely different,

actually. So in the U.S., you know, as we all know, especially with this podcast, there are basically several sources of policymaking. There's, you know, the White House, there's the Congress, there's industry, which is playing a much more significant role now. And there's what's called the scientific community. And policies are, you know, if you have a new mission you want to do or a new strategy, it can come from the White House, which may propose it, may propose the budget to Congress. Congress may either agree with it or not agree with it. Appropriate funding, and through an appropriations bill or provide new direction through an authorization bill, industry may chart their own path in certain areas, which we're seeing more of in the last decade. And then you have the

scientific community where you have things like the National Academies of Science, developing Decadal surveys for space science, for Earth science. And they all kind of weigh in. And they all have a, say, and they'll have a preference for what they want to do in space. So there's a negotiation. There's negotiations in both, right? In both systems. Just the actors are quite different. Yeah. I mean, but I see, I think, reading some of your background material that there seems to be kind of equivalence in some of that, that there is a Chinese scientific academy, right? The Chinese Academy of Sciences. And you've identified that as a pretty important mover. I think there is this discussion of policy entrepreneurs, I think was the term.

And so these ideas are also starting somewhere, but they're just working through a very different set of kind of checkpoints and interest being represented. What type of strategy tends to be deployed? For example, let's even sending humans to the moon aside for a second. How does the Chinese system determine what's the next space science mission that they're going to do? Through what process does that occur? Because there must be some kind of scientific input on that. Yeah. So there's a couple of examples that might be pretty useful.

So first of all, I do want to clarify one, some pretty key distinctions between, say, the National Academies of Science in the U.S. and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China. In the U.S., it serves more of an advisory function where they develop, they kind of convene the scientific community, they develop the key science questions, they ask the community to prioritize those questions, and then they produce the KAL survey. That process is not really the same in China. We have seen, say, in the last 10 and 15 years, I think probably two major efforts, where the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a space science strategy, a long-term space science strategy,

that they then published. It doesn't necessarily carry the same weight as a Decaturable survey in their system. But that's not really the only role for the Chinese Academy of Sciences. They actually also have a very significant role in funding startups, commercial space companies. They have a much, much greater role

in some of the business of space than certainly than the National Academies. And then they serve a function in some of the different groups that guide overall China's space policy. But in terms of how, how missions are proposed and things like that. There's a couple of examples, and I think space in China is kind of interesting in that respect.

Because there's often a few scientists that propose a mission or an initiative, and they carry the day. So one of the most famous examples was back in the 1980s, where in 1983, President Ronald Reagan had started talking about the Strategic Defense Initiative. We call it Star Wars now. This generated a lot of concern in capitals around the world. world. And one of those capitals was actually in France, the president of Ransua Mitterrand at the time, developed an initiative called Jureka, which was similar. It was to advance. France felt they needed to advance aerospace very quickly, but also a lot of other technology areas. China saw this and

decided they also needed to advance. And this is, you know, at this time, China had just started kind of a former opening up. So they also needed to advance a lot of their science and technology. So they called it, hey, this can be known as China's Eureka program. It ended up being known as Project 863. But within this project, it was an attempt to kind of advance a lot of science technology across the country. This was proposed by a small group of very elite scientists to Dong Xiaoping, who was the leader of China at the time. And he agreed. And therefore, this huge effort came to fruition.

You saw something similar, where you had a small group of scientists, propose China's first lunar mission. This actually also was in response to a kind of external events. Japan had just launched a lunar overt a probe, and China felt they also needed to kind of match that scientific achievement. So a group of scientists, a geologist known as Oyang Zilin, as well some others kind of got together, came up with a formulation for what China's first lunar mission might look like, what its scientific objectives might be, and things like that, and pitched it to higher and higher levels of government, and they were finally successful. They got it into the five-year budget, and the project moved forward. It's not

how every project advances, but it is how some fairly significant projects have advanced. Otherwise, kind of in the general explanation of how projects advance, is they can be proposed by institutes, by key scientists. They can come from some of the technology development that's required by some of the key state of enterprises or some of their customers, say, in the military and things like that. So there's a lot of sources for some of this. It's not all strictly top down. They don't necessarily always know exactly what missions they want to do.

They have the general strategy is top down. But some of the missions and some of the ways to solve some of the technical problems and scientific questions comes from the bottom up. Does it tend to then ultimately be grounded in some sort of. practical, geopolitical or industrial need than that they're slotting in a mission to. Are these purely these kind of internal, acceptable policy reasons for the Chinese political system? It seems like, oh, Japan launched a mission to the moon. Well, now we should do something like that.

They find fertile ground first may be something that the scientific community wanted to do anyway, and they were able to then leverage and build that up. or, you know, we need to develop capabilities and this helps kind of stimulate this particular industrial base. Therefore, we can secure that kind of support for that investment. Are there broader kind of symbolic things that are coming into play with this or has it evolved? And again, there may be a distinction on the human and scientific side. But I guess I'm trying to think about when we see these reports about, okay, like the

scientific academy is putting out a long-range plan, they'll do a mission. to Neptune and maybe, you know, X, Y, and Z missions that are going to start in 2030. How serious are we talking about? And where do those kind of get locked in and what's driving them ultimately at this point? You know, I think in that respect, some of the mission proposals that are made in the U.S. and China are a little bit similar because the scientists and the engineers that are involved in the proposal will often make those arguments. They might make an argument, especially in the last two cases I mentioned, you know,

They made the argument that, you know, China needs to advance back in the 1980s. We need to advance to maintain, you know, a seat at the table and to maintain our, you know, a parity with the great powers. They made the same argument in the early 2000s with the Tonga Lunar Program, where, you know, Japan had their own lunar orbit. We have to do that, too. We have to make sure we're, you know, it's a geopolitical struggle. So they certainly do make those arguments.

Now, whether or not they're decisive, they're generally just handed upward and whether or not the powers that be agree that they are geopolitically important. That's a different discussion. But we'd see the same thing in the U.S. where, you know, some of our mission proposals say, hey, you know, we really need to do this mission. Yes, the science is there. Yes, these are important scientific questions that need to be investigated. But we also think it has a geopolitical importance to it. We also think it has some economic benefits that you should be considering. And ultimately, it's up to the leadership to decide whether or not those are, in fact, economic benefits they want to consider or geopolitical arguments.

What is the relationship then of these types of activities to the broad public in China, right? There's obviously a completely and radically different political system. It's not a democracy. You raise this idea or others raise this idea of there's a kind of an internal cultural resonance of how they name some of these projects. And you talk about this idea of national rejuvenation, which I think is a, again, I don't speak Mandarin. And it seems like a much more loaded term or it has much more meaning than just that kind of that direct translation.

Can you talk about like how these are pitched and how the public's relationship is presented or at least desired to be presented by the leadership of China? So to be honest, we don't we don't only have good insight into what the public thinks in China about their own space program. There had been surveys that have been conducted, you know, but there's always like how do they sell it with the expectation to the like when they report it when it goes through official media outlets? It's like what, you can, I think we can probably determine some intent, at least from the leadership of how they want it to be consumed. Would you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so these are part of the propaganda for trying to developing science and technology at a world-class level, becoming stronger, becoming a great power. And, you can see this when, you know, senior leadership, Xi Jinping and other major leaders will go and visit the mission control centers and things like that.

And they'll congratulate the teams on successful landing. on the Martian surface or, you know, the far side of the moon. And it is very much captured in the spirit of patriotism of nationalism. You know, these are great patriots that are supporting the Chinese space program. And you mentioned one thing, which was, you know, national rejuvenation. And so this is kind of a complicated concept that is really starting to define the ideology of China's leadership at this time. So that is, within national rejuvenation, this is an attempt. attempt to kind of make China a great space power.

They could make a great power worldwide, but also great space power. The way Xi Jinping has described this is that, you know, China has a 5,000-year-long civilizational history. But, you know, starting with, say, the Ming Dynasty, they started adopting a policy of isolation back in the 1800s and missed a lot of the Industrial Revolution. That decline was accelerated by things like the Opium War of 1840 and things like that. And it wasn't really until the Chinese Communist Party came to, power in 1949, that a lot of these trends of decline were beginning to be reversed.

And so in his formulation, China's on an upward trajectory towards modernization, towards broad-based development. Is it almost like regaining its rightful place in global affairs? Is that a way to phrase that? That's right. And they would phrase it just like that. China's return to the center of the world, right? Return to significant prominence.

And, you know, core to the belief of, say, Xi Jinping thought is that, you know, ancient China, you know, Marxism, the Communist Revolution, and the modern technocratic state, which includes the space program, are all compatible. And it's all one long narrative of China as a country. And a lot of this includes also, you know, part of this is the China's space program. And it's, you know, delivering benefits. It's raising the level of science and technology in the country, and it's developing self-reliance. China can develop a tone technology, and it doesn't need to rely on other external sources for it. So that's, I mean, that's why a lot of the space programs and a lot of the space missions are so prominently featured, especially maybe compared to other countries worldwide, where you have such acute leadership attention to missions that, you know, land rovers on the lunar surface and things like that.

Do you think it drives a desire to have more firsts or more kind of, you know, the old phrase, space spectaculars, but just kind of very notable things, right? Like landing on the far, the first time to land on the far side, landing on Mars for sample return, obviously humans, is that that seems wrapped up in this type of philosophy then, right? 100%. I really do agree with that. I think China very much feels that these first ever types of achievements are core to, kind of becoming a great power and becoming kind of a superpower at that level. If you look at the recent history, the last couple of decades, you know, trying to spend a lot of time developing missions that in some ways replicated the achievements of historical achievements, so landing on the surface of the moon or putting an astronaut orbit. And then more recently, it was kind of matching some of these historical achievements.

So landing a rover on the Martian surface, only the second country in the world ever to do that successfully after the United States. But I think what we're going to see next is an attempt missions that seek to surpass and to develop first-ever achievements in space. And these might include returning samples from Mars or the next generation of exoplanet observatories, things that the U.S. is actually trying to do right now as well. Yeah. I mean, I feel like when I did a little bit of work on this last year, this looking at their scientific priorities, which are very similar because, again, you have the sum of objective reality out there regardless, right? And it makes sense to go after the same things. But the way that it was phrased and framed, like, we are going to make these breakthrough discoveries

in these areas. And life beyond earth seems to be one of them. And these are, I would characterize them as big swing missions, right? Where maybe they probably like not likely to return the big result, but maybe they will. And if you do enough of them, you know, you'll hit on something, right, versus a much more kind of conservative mindset to science, which seems to be dominating on the space science side of the U.S. and maybe some other aspects of what do you call so-called Western world or U.S. allies in terms of Europe. And that was a, I mean, it seems to go right back to this point, right, that we're setting up for this next century, the Chinese century, and we are now making these kind of groundbreaking historical discoveries. And this is how we do it is through

space. Yeah. I hope we think about it a little bit, is that, you know, China is making really bold missions here. They're going beyond and above, what's been done before. They're also not afraid to engineer large-scale projects. Some of the most significant projects right now are incurring in China.

When we talk about just the level of organization required to develop, whether it's a massive hydroelectric dam or whether it's miles and miles, square miles of solar panel fields, they're daring to think big. And I hope we can

to do that as well in the United States and not pursue kind of incremental achievements, but to do the big things. And I think, you know, I think that's kind of what NASA was made. That's why we developed NASA is to take the big swings to go for the big science. The consequences, though, for the failure have been so high for NASA. I mean, you've lived probably through a lot of this in your tenure there that NASA's expected to do the big things, but perfectly the first time and on budget or under budget for things we've never done before. And God forbid any one of those doesn't, doesn't occur. we've had the political system kind of punish that attitude recently and that the only experimentation

seems to me to be allowed in if you kind of distance NASA from the contractor itself. So as long as there's a private company that's blowing up rockets, that's okay even if they're getting NASA money. But if NASA was blowing up rockets, you'd have, you know, Congress would be down your throat about it. Is there an inherent expectation mismatch here then of what were NASA being told to do versus the perception of what NASA should be doing? Well, I mean, it is true.

We have offloaded some of the risk, including some of the political risk, some of our missions to the private sector. Presumably, NASA's reputational risk is reduced, although I think a lot of people when they see... I think we've increased NASA's reputational risk quite a bit. Right, right. A lot of people don't sense a significant distinction between some of these commercial missions and what NASA does. You know, but, you know, I think we have taken some big swings. The dark mission, the double asteroid redirect test. I'm glad Da Vinci and Bertha are back on Dragonfly.

So these are bold missions. So they are still doing, we are still, it's still doing very bold missions, which is very encouraging. But hopefully it's more across the board. And I hope we don't get penalized for some of these things. I mean, if you're going to experiment, if you're going to take the bold swings, you're going to have to fail. Sometimes you're going to fail.

You know, if you're not failing, then you're probably not taking a bold enough swing. Right. So the question of risk at NASA is really fraught and how much how we assess risk and how much risk the agency should take on. It's a very complicated question, but it does get to the heart of our selection ambitions and how we develop them these days. How does China's space program, do you think, engage with risk in that sense? We just watched an interesting drama play out with their astronauts on their space station and having a damaged return capsule. watching that, what did you take away from that experience that we just saw with us? So China's actually very risk-averse, you know, possibly more so than NASA, to be honest.

And they've been very incremental in their development. They don't make great leaps usually. Ironically. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. But if they do take a big step forward, they might do it on the second mission. And so you see this in, say, the Chongah lunar missions, where the first. mission, they don't take a lot of risk, right? The idea, they know their primary objective,

maybe it's to put an orbiter around the moon, maybe it's to land on the surface. They're going to do that. They're going to do a one or two, a few other key objectives. But then it's the second mission, which is essentially a duplicate. It's Chongah 2, it's China 4, that takes the risk. That's where they introduce technology demonstrations. That's where they may have some secondary mission objectives that you might lose a spacecraft, right? That's where they take the big risk. So it's very interesting to see that because they are finding ways to introduce risk that won't necessarily up at the apple cart on the first try.

We'll be right back with the rest of our space policy edition of Planetary Radio after this short break. Hi, I'm Jack Corelli, Director of Government Relations at the Planetary Society. Last year, NASA's science program faced the largest proposed budget cut in its history. missions were at risk, and decades of scientific progress hung in the balance. But space advocates like you stood up for the scientific exploration of space and won. In the United States, that advocacy reached the halls of Congress. Hundreds of people from across the United States came together for our day of action to save NASA science. They held nearly 250 meetings with congressional offices, urging lawmakers to protect NASA's science programs,

and it made a difference. Congress ultimately rejected nearly all of those devastating cuts. But the movement to save NASA science isn't over. Our work continues. On April 19th and 20th, 2026, the Planetary Society will host our next annual day of action in Washington, D.C., and we invite you to join us. Our team of space policy experts will equip you with everything you need to confidently speak up for the scientific exploration of space.

We give you the training, schedule of meetings, and materials. You just need to bring your passion for space. Research shows that in-person meetings with your elected representatives are the most effective way to influence policy. If you're a U.S. resident and can join us in Washington, D.C.,

we'd love to have you with us. Your voice truly matters. Learn more and register today at planetary.org slash day of action. Moving back towards, let's say, human space flight and the moon, because that is now the big founding or kind of the big centralizing motivation right now. You were at NASA when Artemis was first established, and you just recently left NASA, but, you know, this has been Artemis right for roughly seven years, I think, while you

were there. One can argue whether SLS, we had a moon rocket that NASA maybe didn't want to admit, or at least the administration prior to that, didn't want to. admit was a moon rocket for a long time. But how has the rhetoric around Artemis and its motivation, particularly vis-à-vis China, changed over those seven years from the start to where our current point is? And I'll just raise as a point of example here. In September of 2025, the Senate Commerce Committee had a hearing called, there's a bad moon on the rise, why Congress and NASA must thwart China in the space race.

So I feel like we're very much firmly into now a new space race territory, which to me feels like relatively recent increase of rhetoric around that. Is that from your perspective accurate? And have you seen that develop over the course of Artemis? So I would say, you know, kind of at the beginning stages when the program was just being formulated, there were roughly balanced comparatives, right? There was a sense that we're going to go back to the moon. It's going to be different this time.

We're going to go. It's going to be sustainable. We're going to stick around. We're going to build infrastructure. It's going to be different from Nepal. But you also did have the imperative that, well, we need to get back to before China does. Because you could see China had a very long-term plan to go back to the moon and to put astronauts on the surface and to build infrastructure. It was fairly nascent at the time when Artemis was just being developed.

But we had seen the entire progression of the Chinese winter program for a decade or two at that point. So these were balancing considerations. I think it's right that the last couple of years, the imperative regarding beating China back to the moon has taken more prominence. It's become more heated. It's become the kind of the go-to rationale for it, even though I think a lot of folks in the program, working on the program, probably feel that some of the longer term sustainability and some of the longer term development

from under surface operations and things, maybe that's where the focus should be. Do you think there's an inherent risk by that shift in rhetoric and expectations for Artemis? Because, I mean, the whole point was that we don't do Apollo, right? Because Apollo, you know, famously didn't continue. We went six times and they're like, all right, you won the risk. Congratulations. And we, an enduring long-term justification was kind of the, I call this now the Pace Doctrine in terms of why we go to the moon as this kind of coalition of allies and nations and science

and commerce and what have you. And yes, geopolitical competition is part of that, but it's not the single defying thing. And I feel like we're starting now to see, well, maybe we give up the South Pole as our landing site. Maybe we simplify a lot of these things for the first landing. And like all these benefits of the long-termism are starting to be maybe dropped away in order to frantically get boots and a flag on the ground again, which seems to be bad in terms of the overall stability of this program. I feel like we are. We are entering risk. Is that something that you see as well? Or is this, is it just so seductive to use geopolitics as the primary driver that we'll hope it's different this time?

It's a mix of both, right? I mean, I think we are kind of mortgaging some of the long term. vision and some of the long-term goals for some immediate support. I think framing this as a space race of China may have some short-term benefit. It may not. It hasn't necessarily materialized all two. I mean, they did get a pretty significant pusup in some of the more recent discussions. But, you know, I think you're right.

I think it is, it can be sort of a near-term thing. Unless we're able to frame it more broadly as more of a strategic competition with China that doesn't necessarily have an end date before 2030, it's going to continue. continue for perhaps decades. It's going to include a lot of things, not just boots on the moon, but, you know, I like to frame it as so broad that includes things, geopolitical considerations, economic considerations, national security, social and cultural impact and science. You know, where is science and all of this? You know, we should be brought that up a few times. Yeah.

That's right. That's right. But that's part of the strategic competition as well. And it's an important part. And so, you know, we do need to kind of maintain that cognizance of the 30,000-foot level of all of these other considerations and not let some of the more immediate interests sweep those away. I mean, for our listeners, and even for me at times, I'm just like, are we actually in a real space? I mean, what are the consequences of losing? So, you know, this. Like, I still have a hard time understanding, okay, China lands in 2030 or 20, whatever, and we haven't yet. what are what are the downsides because to me like well I know some of the arguments out there oh well they'll establish a fission reactor with a keepout zone and then they'll have a big swath of the moon

they'll have all the good resources well I mean you have to have a fishing reactor first you have to have a centralized source of resource I mean the moon seems pretty big to me right like one landing somehow doesn't mean the end of this so I'm I don't understand necessarily this frantic shift to say we need to get our people back there first because if we don't, it'll forever be done. And that doesn't mean I don't believe there's some as broader geopolitical, you know, great power competition at play here. But it doesn't seem dire in the way, you know, that even Apollo was pitched, which was obviously by the time it happened, not the primary situation.

So, I mean, are we first, are we in a space race? Do you agree with that framing? I'll wait to refer to as a strategic space competition. The reason for that is, you know, a space race seems to connote an endpoint. Yeah. You know, you cross the line. I don't know where that line is, right? And so I don't know that there will be an endpoint that we will know when we pass that.

So I think it's going to be more of a competition and you're going to know there's going to be certain periods. And they could be fairly long where maybe we're not the superpower or, you know, we're not number one and someone else is and then who shifts back. and we were climbing it. I think there's just going to be a tension. It's going to be an ongoing competition for quite some time. But what are we competing for, I guess, at this point? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, so you mentioned these idea of keep out zones and things like that, you know, do you need to be first? And what does that get you, right? So I think the rhetoric at this point is fairly significant. We should probably be first. I do want us to be first. But what does that actually get you, right? You know, it is a concern to have these types of, you know, keep out zones,

standard setting and these type of things, if you plan to be there a long time. If you're going to have a long-term presence, then you should establish these things. And having a presence will certainly go a long way towards establishing these things. But we should also consider, you know, when the Wright brothers first blew the airplane, they weren't thinking of how do we develop protocols for landing around airports around the world. They just wanted to get there. They just wanted to test out the technology. They wanted to make sure that they could fly an airplane first and land there. And it's going to be a number of missions where they're like that. You know, we didn't really develop a lot of lot of these standards and protocols, everything, until the advent of mass air travel, right?

So I think we do have some time before a lot of these things come into play. Keep up zones are interesting. I think there is some probably highly desirable areas on the lunar surface that you could potentially get there and you don't want to conduct your scientific investigations or your technology demonstrations without interference. But for a lot of these other things, let's make sure we can get there and we have a series of missions following on. You know, right now we don't really know what happens after Artemis 4, right?

We have a clear vision of the idea of what the funding looks like. So it really has to be, you know, a fulsome effort and a kind of long-term mission planning to understand how long we're going to be there. And then we can start integrating some of these other considerations. Yeah. I mean, as you were talking, I was kind of reminded, and if you see if I remember my history correctly, but, you know, the Portuguese had the spice islands and then the Dutch. But then it was the British.

And the British ultimately had them for a lot. a lot longer and then made, you know, it was part of a much more impactful or New Amsterdam, which is now New York, right, for the same reason. Like, it didn't really matter in that case as who was first. It mattered who was there the longest, right, in terms of their long-term kind of global integration and consequence to the nations and occupied them. It's been a strange formulation to me. And this is where I do worry that the sudden shift of trying to race there is just setting NASA up also to lose. You know, you know. You know. funding for these programs as well as anybody. But I mean, you look at the inflation adjusted

curve for Apollo at its peak in 1966. Just on Apollo, you're spending roughly $40 billion in 2025 adjusted dollars, just on Apollo. The plus up that Artemis got this year is on the order of a few billion to a total of nine, right? And that's the most it's ever had by a significant amount. We're not funding it like it's a real space race, right? It's been a big, flat, slow curve over the last, you know, 10 years. And we're now hoping that, you know, these commercial partners or private individuals basically will just chip in to help us, you know, reach this important national geo-strategic goal. How serious are we really taking it if we can't actually even pay for it ourselves? And we just hope someone donates their, their rockets to making it

do that. So this is like, it seems to me to be setting up NASA to fail because we haven't been funding it like a space race the last seven years, and we don't seem any inclined to do it going forward. Yeah, I do really appreciate your work on the NASA budget and the Apollo budget. The articles you've published, it's fascinating stuff. You know, I agree. I think, you know, the buildup for Apollo was far more significant. Certainly, we were starting at a lower level of development and maturity in terms of, you know, what sort of infrastructure we had. But, yeah, it hasn't been the similar sharp rise in funding. I don't know that commercial companies will take up the slack.

It's probably an economic misunderstanding to think that commercial companies will pursue public goods in the development of some of these projects. If you want to explore the moons of Jupiter, that may be a public good that the government would have to pay for on behalf of the American people and for national goals. But there may not be a profit motivation in that. In fact, there really probably isn't. And, you know, when you talk about, you know, some of these lunar missions and things like that, there could be some profit. There could be some market incentives for some of these missions. We see that with clips and things. But I don't know about, you know, the long-term human presence.

We'll have to see how that shakes out. Would you call clips a success? It's been mixed so far, right? We're taking shots on goal. But it's been mixed so far. It's been very expensive for what they've achieved. Hopefully, they will have some more successes coming up. I'd like to see that.

I'd like to see the missions get more significant. I thought the cancellation of Viper was unfortunate, and it was going to be one of the more significant science missions to the inner surface. So hopefully that would be provided somehow. I'm not sure how. From the, I'd say the Chinese political perspective, would it mean anything to their plans if U.S. astronauts landed first again? Or do their plans continue? Does it have any impact at all? No, I really think they will.

land. They'll continue. It won't affect the program. I mean, that seems really, really important, right? Because then what are there? And I think maybe this is one of my worries is that it's almost like we are in the United States. When I say we, I'd say the U.S. political system has decided that they're competing against almost like a caricature or misunderstanding of the Chinese space program in this sense. Because if what do we then gain, if we, okay, great, we're there first. We land and it doesn't, if it changes nothing, about the plans of your geopolitical competitor, then have you correctly assessed the situation, right?

You would think that if it actually is a race and there is really importance to doing this first, there would be a change theoretically, right? That they would have to revise or there would be some consequence. But if there's not, what do we, are we working ourselves up in a sense here, you know, wanting or, you know, I feel like there's always been this desire to return to, you know, Cold War 2.0, particularly with space because that's when all the money came.

And we're seeing that to some degree right now. But otherwise, are we just, are we competing with a phantom here if there's, if there's no change in what China's plans would be? Well, I think you're kind of keying on some of the issue with calling this a space race. And just be clear, you haven't been out there calling this a space race. Like, you're just an expert in some of these things. And you're on the inside at NASA's. I mean, this is kind of keying up as you were there, you know, over the last few years.

Right. Well, when it was formulated as such, you know, my advice was, let's not call it that. Yeah. Because if you win, it doesn't necessarily do all that much where you already won the space race. And if you lose, then it really can be painful. And if you think, you know, when we won the first space race, the benefits were very significant. Right. It really ushered in a narrative of American exceptionalism for decades. It was a major achievement, and it still is. You know, the second time we do that, against a different average theory, it's not going

to have the same impact, I don't think. The situation's not quite the same. The historical circumstance is not the same. We've already been there. That's probably the most important thing. So we're kind of on our own track where we want to go back to the moon. We want to develop this infrastructure and sustainability. We want to try out some new technologies.

We want commercial to lead. All great stuff. I thought, you know, great plan. We're doing it for our own reasons. And I think what we're doing it for our own reasons. And I think what we see now is a little bit of great power mirroring, right, where we stop taking the initiative and we pursue our own strategy for our own domestic reasons or for why we want to pursue these reasons. And we start seeing what others are doing or reactive to what others are doing. And it can become a little bit of a loop in that sense where we all just kind of reactive to each other rather than pursuing our own names.

Yeah. You taking the words right out of my mind. That's what I have been more impressed on this. I'd say, like, I want, you know, as an American, I'd like our space program to have its self-intrinsic value and needs and serve the needs of the nation as it is now and not be just a purely reactive set of goals. And arguably Apollo was. And, you know, Eisenhower and his, a lot of a staff are very hesitant to engage on

Khrushchev's playground in that sense because they were setting the context, they were setting the expectations and the U.S. should be leading on its own and be confident enough. Now, again, we got people on Moonfields. for that, so fine, you know. But I feel like we're drifting into this now reactionary posture. And I was thinking also, as you were talking about this, is this more a message that we, we again, being kind of the U.S. and its allies, want to send to ourselves that we're still capable of doing something like this, that it's almost a desire to show that we still have the juice, you know, that we can still go back to the moon if we want. And, you know, we'll,

we'll have these kind of other motivations that we've all kind of crammed in there to make it happen. but framing it and having this taste of maybe this great power competition, again, just kind of gets everyone revved up and say, okay, now is the chance we can show, get that inspiration, we can reachieve that period of our history. It's almost like a seeking out nostalgia, which again, is not the healthiest, a mental place to be in, nor is it the best way to frame a whole space program out. And again, I'm being a bit extreme on this because I still want us to go to the moon, but just this particular framing almost seems like it's a way to convince us, you know, to certain, you know, self-identity is still valid. Yeah, I mean, I think there's something to that.

You know, I think we still want the narratives of American exceptionalism to exist. We still want that to be true. The ball of missions were highly symbolic, and we want to reclaim some of that, some of that symbolism, some of that sense of prestige and America's place in the world. So we have chosen landing back on the moon as to serve that function. It may be a little bit more muted than the first time around, but it can still be, it's still going to be great. You know, if we were to get back first. And it'll be a big deal. And hopefully it helps kind of foreshorten the other narrative, which is fairly big in China right now, which is that the U.S. is somehow in decline and China's on the rise.

Yeah. We don't want that to take hold, which, you know, not getting their first could potentially feed into those types of perceptions. Well, we've almost like created now the conditions for that symbol. loss in that framing, right? By not approaching it from the beginning that way and now kind of layering it on at the end, in terms of kind of like the upcoming kind of Chinese approach, could almost, you argue, does China actually almost want to encourage this framing by the U.S. in hopes that we will overreact? Is that too much four-dimensional chess kind of thinking on this?

Are they pleased to see like a kind of a rapid turn and shifting around? Like, well, maybe we'll go to the Mars instead. And, you know, that'll be the big thing. Well, no, no, actually, sorry, we're going to build a moon base and just kind of whipsawing around helps then kind of, it reinforces this dynamic that you just kind of outlined in a bit. Is there any intentionality on that, or are they just kind of sitting back and watching? I think it's an interesting thesis. I don't think they're playing. You can just say no.

I don't think they're playing like in a 40 chance. You know, I, you know, I think they're probably just as surprised as the scientific community when they see us. superpower, you know, slashing its science technology funding. The self-emulating its own scientific capabilities. I think they're surprised. But, you know, they're going to continue advancing on their own. Maybe they'll plus up their own science and technology. There's been significant growth in the last 10 years, as we talked about.

How brittle is China's plans in the sense of being tied to the Xi Jinping? He seems to have really established himself, you know, more centralized authority. We actually just saw a big purge of the military. We talked about these ideas of national rejuvenation. And it seems very tied to his, and a lot of their men, even arguably their manufacturing policies are really tied to his particular understanding about national power and strength, but also this kind of cultural nostalgia and desire to return China to this central place

via these kind of highly symbolic acts. Is that brittle on that sense? Is it dependent? Is it now reflecting almost kind of his personal worldview about what does it mean to be a great power that, you know, people who grew up and saw a moon landing happen at some stage reflecting now from that? So I think he has been a very strong advocate and proponent for China's space program, but more broadly, a very strong centralized state, a very strong military. He's really been a proponent of a lot of these things. And so I think the space program survives and exists if he were to leave power. But I think some of the truly civilizational, first ever in the history of the world type achievements,

I think some of the impetus to reach for those might go away. It might be lessened. I think Xi Jinping and Xi Jinping thought is really kind of gearing folks up to take those really big swings, the thousand-year swings. And so you might lose some of that momentum, but I think they will continue. I don't see it as particularly brittle. They generally set things into motion

and they carry through with a lot of them. The entire scheme of how to develop infrastructure on the moon, we'll see if that comes to fruition. There are plans that go out to 2050 and 2016 and these things, we'll have to see, but I think they're quite confident they'll achieve the landings, and then there will be the International Little Research Station at least the beginning parts of that.

And you just quickly summarize what that is for listeners. Yeah. So China's really been building, starting with their first lunar mission, Chana, Chana, which just orbited the moon. They always split that up into three phases. They're going to orbit, and they're going to land on the surface, and then they're going to pick up samples and return them. So orbit and land, return three main phases.

And that took us up to Chana 6, basically. Tunga 5 or 6. Chana 5 and 6 were the return sample. missions. And they completed those just recently. By 2024 was the last one. Now there's the fourth phase of the lunar program, and that's the International Lunar Research Station. Sometimes it's called ILRS. This will include upcoming missions like Chonga 7 and Changa 8 and then ILRS dedicated missions. And this will be developing infrastructure on the lunar surface, power systems, dropping cargo, developing logistics routes and scientific investigations

and maybe vision sources on the surface, a pretty expansive vision of how it all might work, including communications and satellites in orbit to provide communications relays and things like that. So it's a very expansive vision of what a infrastructure on the surface would look like. It wouldn't be permanently inhabited. It would be probably intermittently inhabited with astronauts. They would touch down and they would leave.

but it would be a pretty dramatic testing ground for things like autonomous vehicles. How can AI actually do some of the work on the surface for scientific investigations? How can robots kind of do the tending of these laboratories on the inner surface? It'd be pretty amazing to see that. If they were to, you know, if we'd all come to fruition, we're thinking of similar things. And, you know, I hope ours comes to fruition as well. But, you know, this is what the 20, 30-year plan envisions is quite bold. Before we go, I want to touch on one more topic that you raised in your testimony to the House of Representatives last year, which I thought was really, I'd never considered before, but seemed actually maybe more of an actual direct threat in some ways to U.S. manufacturing capabilities for aerospace.

You talked about this idea of in a number of markets, China has basically overwhelmed a global industrial base by driving down prices, like in solar power batteries. We're seeing this now with electric vehicles. And basically, you know, it makes it financially infeasible to have domestic production capabilities unless there's really strong, you know, tariffs or incentives or national security concerns. But then they centralize the manufacturing capability in China, which then gives them a norm of. leverage globally. And so you talked about this in terms of aerospace and as space is becoming more commoditized, particularly with large distributed, you know, satellite communications networks, rocket launches, components, what have you. You identify this as a more practical kind of potential threat. So I want to just explore this a little bit with you. Where do you see,

is this an intentional, you think strategy currently being deployed? And where are we seeing this in terms of both China's industrial base and also its growing commercial space sector. So in terms of kind of space manufacturing, and when I was an asset, I actually had a big survey looking at the U.S. industrial base and supply chain, try to understand what some of our advantages were and things like that. So the U.S. does have advantages, and we see that in some of the great innovations that we see some commercial companies doing. Reusibility is just one of them. And with constellations, satellite constellations, we also had been pioneering, kind of large-scale industrial production of satellites,

not just a single one-off of bespoke satellite, but dozens, hundreds, soon to be thousands. And this is really the frontier of space manufacturing right now. And we're seeing China do something that's very similar. Where China has certain advantages is in their industrial capacity and their ability to manufacture spacecraft and spacecraft components and things like that. You know, there's only one place in the world that can produce, you know, a million iPhones in one a week.

And it is China. And how do they develop this type of advantage? It took years to develop it. And as part of that process of expanding and trying to figure out where the efficiencies were and the production manufacturing process, they develop what's often called process knowledge. And also how to improve industrial processes to get better and better and better and faster and faster and more efficient. and introduce innovations and things like that along the way. So China is really good at that, as we've seen. Produce more solar panels and anybody else.

They're doing that in electric vehicles right now. And soon they'll be doing it in space as well. And so when we're talking about 10, 20,000, 30,000 satellite constellations, China will be able to iterate very quickly, not only build the initial buildout of these satellites, but iterate very quickly, develop advances, and swap them out, and tailor things very quickly.

So this is really an advantage that they have. And they can drive prices down extremely. And we saw that with solar panels, which is something I've looked at in the past as well. You know, when China entered the market, they were able to do, they didn't care about loss leaders. The government would subsidize, a lot of these companies, exorbitantly pushed the prices down. A lot of these companies didn't survive. They went bankrupt.

But they developed processes along the way that were then absorbed by other companies. And so now a lot of the biggest solar panel manufacturers are. in China. Could see something similar with whether it's a lunch vehicle technology, whether it's satellite manufacturing, whether it's some other upstream components that factor in production of satellites. Now, that's just kind of generally China's industrial policy approach. But there is something that is relevant here, which is something called military civil fusion.

And this is a policy that China's had for a couple of years where they really want to try to capture whatever's going on in the commercial sector that is innovative or interesting, that's working really well, capture that and spin it into the military or spin it into the government programs. At the same time, if there's something innovative happening in the military, spin it off into commercial. So you had the interplay. Time didn't come up with this. You know, actually, the seeds of this were really developed by the United States. We used to call it civil military integration. But it was basically post-World War II when, you know, at Vannevar Bush, helped set up kind of the government industry academia triangle, where, you know, the government

would provide a lot of the basic R&D funding. Industry would develop a lot of the products. Academia would kind of focus on fundamental R&D and things like that. It's very, very useful. A lot of the interplay between these three constituencies was very useful. And you also had industry develop a lot of really fantastic basic R&D. Bell Labs is a great example of that. They developed the transistor, the photovoltaic cell, some of the early radio astronomy experience, right? That was industry doing basic R&D. It was AT&T. At the time, they had been given a monopoly over all the communications.

So, you know, in return, they did some basic. And some money to throw around for basic R&D. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for here. But just amazing. And this is really the, you know, we look back in these days and say, wow, this was really, when we were innovating, we were developing the transistor. I mean, the semiconductor, the basis of, you know, our modern world. But, you know, it was that interplay between all these various functions.

And this led to Silicon Valley as well, you know, of course, while the aerospace companies, things like that. So China very much studied the system that is in incorporating it. It looks a little bit different than it does in the U.S., but that's just because their system is different. It's set up differently in historical circumstance. But it's, you know, this is essentially kind of what's going on. Much more heavy-handed in China. The military simple fusion policy is in the U.S. is a little bit of take it or leave it.

If it's a benefit to you, you can do it, but if not. But in China, it's more, you're going to do this. It's a bit more direct. I guess what is the counter policy then? I mean, is it just purely asserting national security interests? And so, I mean, kind of now we can't buy, I think, Chinese components to put into most aerospace systems. I guess there's a global issue beyond the United States. but what kind of counter policy is there to just increase U.S. production and try to keep pace, form alliances, you know.

Yeah. I think the way this is typically framed is you can either create higher barriers so you can create more stringent export controls, create the barriers. And so U.S. technology stays unsure, the type of thing. The other way to do it is to out-innovate, is to poor funding into R&D and science and technology. and just stay ahead of the curve and keep funding and process these innovations as they come in, do a better job of spinning off technologies from government to industry, and a better job of spinning on from industry into government.

I'm generally, I mean, we need export control regimes, I think it's very important, but I'm generally in favor of out innovating and producing progress rather than, you know. Right, closing the moat, putting in a moat and, yeah. Yeah, there will be anything to protect with our moat if we're not constantly innovating and investing. For listeners who want to follow this and be able to follow this at a more sophisticated level, first, I mean, how important is it to speak Mandarin in order to follow kind of the actual news

and understand some of the nuances in terms of coming out of China's space progress and development, both on the science and human spaceflight side? Well, so I teach at Georgetown as an adjunct professor. I do encourage students to study Mandarin Chinese. I did myself. I lived in China and studied for years. I think it's very helpful. It's also helpful not just simply the language, but understanding the culture, the society, kind of where they're coming from, can help you avoid some kind of misperceptions or just assuming they're just like us.

I think one of the bigger issues right now is kind of assuming China behaves the same way America. They really do not, but it can lead you to just kind of assuming a lot of intentions and motivations that may not be there. Sometimes the media does get something's wrong when they kind of review what's going on in China. There was an example a couple years ago of a lawyer service, I won't mention which one, that picked up something in the Chinese press and developed an article about it that said, you know, China is planning to go to Mars. Human missions to Mars by 2030, 2029 was going to be the launch. And it created a pretty significant interest in the U.S. It was published widely. But I went back and looked at kind of what the source material was.

And, you know, it was from a legitimate source. It was from the major launch manufacturer in China. But what the leader that organization was doing was explaining the periods of conjunction and opposition for Mars and when these might make ideal times to transit with a human mission. And so he had 2029, every 26 months, he had a pretty optimal window. And so it got, you know, pulled into the U.S. media as they're planning a bunch of missions. And some of the best ones are coming up in the next two years, the next four years.

So there can be some misperceptions and kind of miscommunication that can happen. Yeah. So how do we be savvy consumers of this information? What are like common misconceptions, I guess, that either our media or ourselves or elected officials tend to have about China Space Program that we should all keep in mind as we see the news progress over the next few years? You know, China's not a space program is not necessarily monolithic. There are different actors with different priorities and competing interests. And so when we see something in the news, we shouldn't necessarily assume that whoever speaking speaks for the entire program. and that this is, in fact, long-term strategy or this is the plan.

There is a diversity. There is a plurality of opinion and influence within the China system, less so than the United States. But there are actors in the system that compete with each other that have public pronouncements in order to advance a certain position or to advocate for a certain mission or program line. And so it can be confusing to understand whether or not this is actually the, the actual state's government's plan or whether or not this is just an actor kind of proposing something that they'd like to see happen, which we do see proposing missions that are more like wishless, then confirmed and fronted.

And that's easy to kind of then, where do you know, how do you know which one is which? And so there's, I guess a bit of a skepticism in terms of some of those pronouncements seems to be a good practice. Right. It can create an echo chamber where, you know, oh, no, now they're not. Now, you know, we heard China's doing this amazing thing that are going to, you know, fly missions, human missions to Mars. Well, we better do the same thing. You know, so there needs to be some consideration of the sources and how real it is.

As we go forward in the next few years, what will you be watching for to assess China's progress in both moon space science and other aspects of space? Well, as we mentioned previously, I think the next few years is really the period where there's, the Chinese space program will advance into a period of attempting first-ever-type missions. So really pushing the boundaries, pushing the frontiers of technology. So I'll be looking for those missions, not missions that they've already done or that others have done, but where does China do the first thing we've ever seen a space program do before? That's going to be really interesting. So I hope we're there.

I hope we're doing the same missions. I hope we're doing those missions, to be honest. I don't think we can just claim we're in a space race and then decide that the rest of the solar system doesn't count and only the moon does while we cancel everything else. That doesn't make consistent sense to me. I guess we made it through this year kind of barely and hopefully cooler heads will prevail. Patrick Bisha, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this. Maybe we can check in with you in a few years and see where we are how much progress has or hasn't been made and if we're still in a race and who's one or not. That'd be great.

and plan to. Thanks. I appreciate it. We've reached the end of this month's episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. But we will be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophies and ideas that power space science and exploration. Help others in the meantime learn more about space policy and the Planetary Society

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