The Guardian view on the new space race: humanity risks exporting its old politics to the moon | Editorial

DDuring the Cold War space race, the Apollo moon missions were motivated by the need to prove American superiority. After making this political and technological point with the 1969 moon landing, the competition between Moscow and Washington ran out of steam. A new race in the sky begins in 2026, reigniting geopolitical competition under the guise of “peaceful exploration”. The Moon’s south pole is becoming the most valuable real estate in the solar system, providing “peaks of eternal light” for solar panels and ice deposits in craters shielded from the sun.

The United States and a China-led bloc are interested in the lunar surface and its potential to control a post-Earth economy. Space was humanity’s last common good, supposedly protected by the 1967 UN Space Treaty which prohibits state exploitation of the skies. However, it remains vague when it comes to private claims – a loophole that is now fueling a tycoon-led rush for stars. The goal is obvious: act first, shape standards, and challenge others to oppose them. Two lunar missions launching next year – NASA’s Artemis II and China’s Chang’e 7 – are vying for strategic supremacy.

To accelerate the commercialization of space, Donald Trump is reducing state support for NASA, which will have its smallest budget since 1961. Washington wants space exploration to be led by the private sector, a desire anchored in the Artemis agreements. Signed by more than 40 countries, the agreements constitute a vision for extending Earth’s ownership structures into space – and a vision embraced by tech moguls such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It’s no wonder, then, that Mr. Musk plans to launch his space exploration company SpaceX in 2026 for $1.5 trillion.

In contrast, the International Lunar Research Station – a joint effort by China with Russia and its southern partners – embodies a state-led approach that seeks to escape a US-led system. China and Russia say they are complying with UN rules because their moon bases will be placed under the control of a “collaborative” international consortium and not under the control of a single state.

Superpower rivalry

The result is a rivalry between two camps publicly invoking “peaceful exploration” while engaging in strategic competition for lunar resources. It is already claimed that water could produce rocket fuel and sustain life. Others wonder if moon rock could be useful for construction. These are mostly rhetorical claims – like the oft-repeated claim that helium-3 from space is a potential fusion fuel. These are arguments, however flimsy, for governments to justify lunar spending with the promise of future potential.

Nuclear fission on the Moon, on the other hand, is an engineering race, with the United States and China and Russia already funding the design of reactors needed to support human lunar colonies. NASA intends to do this within five years; China and Russia say theirs will be operational by 2035. The technology is not new: small fission reactors in space were part of the Cold War. But the moon looks like a testing ground. Reliable nuclear power during the 14-day lunar night would be necessary for permanent human bases. Once solved, the same energy technology could be transported to Mars. Mr Trump has previously said US astronauts will plant stars and stripes on Mars.

The 1992 UN Principles for the Use of Nuclear Power Sources in Outer Space provide a framework for safety and risk reduction, but are not a regulatory framework. The nation that figures out how to build reliable energy systems around the world could determine the balance of industrial and digital power for the next century.

The desire to leave Earth is often characterized by humans’ need for discovery and exploration. But there may be something more urgent: humanity is using natural resources 1.7 times faster than our planet’s biocapacity can regenerate them. There are essentially three solutions: become more efficient by further reducing GDP per unit of energy; greening the production, distribution and consumption of the economy to align capitalism with ecological limits; or move energy-intensive processes off-world.

Much of Silicon Valley favors the latter techno-optimistic option over the first two earthly approaches. Google wants data centers in orbit powered by solar energy. The energy and IT arms races have merged, surprising recognition that Earth-based data centers are approaching ecological and political limits. The answer: Google needs to put them in the sky. As demand for artificial intelligence and electrification accelerate faster than terrestrial grids can decarbonize, the incentive for continuous off-Earth solar will become stronger. What begins as a pragmatic innovation could end in a new phase of extraction: a search for energy and computing capacity once the limits of the Earth are reached.

Red Mars

Perhaps life imitates art. Kim Stanley Robinson’s classic Mars science fiction trilogy opens in 2026 with humanity’s first colonial voyage to the planet. In his first book, Red Mars shows that Earth’s nations and corporations have been competing for decades to control the new frontier. Robinson’s “Transnats” prefigure today’s private entrepreneurs and state conglomerates. Echoes of the novel’s debates – nuclear versus solar, terraforming versus preservation – are found in today’s real space race. And just as the colonization of Mars was justified by Earth’s ecological decline, current lunar exploration is rationalized by “resource utilization” – using the Moon’s resources to reduce dependence on the home planet. The logic subtly reverses the problem: planetary overshoot becomes an authorization to extend it.

Red Mars ultimately warns that humanity would export its old policies to new worlds with disastrous results. Before we occupy another planet, the message of the novel is that we must first learn to live sustainably on our own. We can escape Earth, but, the novel asks, can we escape ourselves? Yet today, space law is shaped to allow appropriation under the guise of peaceful commercial activities. The US Space Act of 2015 allows mining of asteroids as if they were open ore veins. NASA’s moon rock returns helped the U.S. Congress justify space property rights, opening the door to humanity’s last common good falling into corporate hands.

In the final installment of Robinson’s trilogy, Blue Mars, in 2225, the colonists live in harmony with the world they have created. Humans are terraforming Mars and finally beginning to responsibly inhabit it. We can only hope that we understand this much sooner.