Posted on January 11, 2023
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In an interview given to Politico, Bill Nelson, administrator at NASA, expresses his concern regarding China’s entry into the space competition to go to the Moon. For him, China might quickly find a way to land in an attempt to appropriate the richest resources of the natural satellite. Nelson cites as an example – more down to earth we dare say – the attitude of Beijing in the South China Sea, which has extended its military domination over certain islands with disputed status: “If you doubt it, look at what they have made with the Spratly Islands. »
China’s space ambition
Since the 2000s, the Chinese space program has experienced unprecedented growth. It includes, among other things, the exploration of the Moon, in parallel with its own Mars exploration mission. In November 2022, a great leap forward was made with the dispatch of three “taikonauts” – the Chinese term for astronaut – to the brand new Tiangong orbital station, a direct competitor to the International Space Station (ISS), piloted by the NASA and several international partners including Russia.
Bill Nelson’s warning comes at the time of passage of the adoption of the annual budget for NASA, which in the eyes of the administrators of the space agency, is not ambitious enough to continue the Artemis II and Artemis III programs already in the pipes.
As noted by the science journalist Robert Wrightplaying on the Chinese threat to ask for additional credits recalls the spirit of the Cold War and can cause the American government to waste public money without a seriously assessed threat or to face a largely fantasized competition:
“If Nelson were the only one in Washington trying to monetize the fear of China, the dangers of this endeavor wouldn’t be worth much concern. But this is not the case. Many civil servants and lobbyists play much the same game, and their numbers keep growing. And their arguments are often dubious even if they are less blatant than warnings of an impending lunar confrontation with China. If enough of these funding proposals are successful, it might result in a significant diversion of resources to projects that are unnecessary, even counterproductive and even dangerous. »
Fiscal blackmail once morest the Chinese threat
According to political scientist and Cato Institute fellow John Mueller, the temptation to exaggerate existential threats to the United States in order to capture public money has been a feature of all American foreign policy since the end of World War II. world. If Beijing does not hide its ambitions to play in the big leagues, it must not become the pretext to maintain or develop public programs whose money might be used more wisely elsewhere.
