Opinion | US extends rivalry with China to the moon as it resists cooperation and seeks control over mining
- Nasa claims its Artemis lunar programme will promote diversity and cooperation, but fellow space powers China and Russia have been left out in the cold
- With the US attempting to lay down rules for mineral extraction, the new space race looks set to divide the world – and the moon – along Cold War fault lines
There’s enough strife on land, sea and in the air to keep US Cold Warriors and their Wolf Warrior counterparts in China sparring for a long time to come, but the race to create zones of influence and secure resources doesn’t begin and end with planet Earth.
“Through Artemis, Nasa aims to land the first woman and first person of colour on the moon,” the mission statement reads. The US will “collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the moon”.
At first glance, both China and Russia would be logical international partners, but the statement has a distinctly American accent.
It’s not the first time the US has tried to set the terms by which other nations can explore Earth’s only natural satellite. A US-scripted “Moon Treaty” was drawn up in 1979 but eventually withered away because the tiny handful of nations capable of competing with the US in space were not interested in signing away their rights.
Even the flag-waving president Donald Trump came to disdain the treaty because it suggested that the moon should be treated as part of a “global commons” rather than as a private resource base that individual nations and corporations could exploit.
