The new race to space: a struggle to colonize the Moon and Mars

The world has been going for a decade a new world orderChina is emerging with increasing power, Russia is regaining superpower status, the United States is showing signs of weakness, and private companies are seeing increasing capital. The rebalancing of forces leads us to a world of three superpowers and a group of diffuse but increasingly powerful billionaires who control the commercial fabric and capital.

The North American space program

This scenario was fundamental to revitalizing a space race that had died of hunger and which had been reduced to museums. If from 1972, the United States did not send a man out of the Earth's orbit and that in 2010 the museums were drawing lots of space shuttles, in the summer of 2017, Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States, announced that NASA I would send astronauts on the moon, but this time as an intermediate station for the arrival on Mars. The new race to space had just defined the finish line, Mars.

Without emerging China and renewed Russia, the race for space would have been reduced to the manufacture of space drones. The proof is X-37B, a space drone which was suspected to be a weapon that can be used from space and is about 9 meters long and 3 high and weighs about 5 tons. Figures that contrast with the 38 meters long, 18 high and 105 tons of former space shuttles. The X-37B, unlike the old bins that carried between 5 and 7 people, no crew.

In this race, we do not know exactly who the contenders are, although many analysts say that China seems to have the upper hand. However, the step taken by the probe Chang & # 39; e 4 on January 3, when it lands for the first time in history on the hidden face of the moon, can only be cataloged as an unprecedented milestone and a great step forward for the conquest of space. . And for humanity.

The program Chang & # 39; e

The fourth probe of the program Chang & # 39; e, named in honor of the goddess that Chinese mythology places as a satellite inhabitant of the Earth, continues the path traced by the first orbital probe launched by China in 2007.

Chang & # 39; e 4, with a scout vehicle, will prepare for the arrival of an inhabited mission in 2036 with the cartography of the ground, the knowledge of the mineral composition and the structure of the surface and the measurement of neutron and neutral radiation. Therefore, if the United States has set a goal to inhabit the moon to reach Mars, China is currently only proposing to inhabit Chang's areas.

The complex Russian situation

The Soviet Union did not win the battle to reach the Moon first, but according to a large number of analysts, it beat the race to space. Sputnik, Laika, Gagarin or MIR are four of the great Soviet monuments that gave him the ultimate victory in the race for space. This is the case, the International Space Station (ISS) would have been impossible without Russian knowledge. For this reason and for the reconquest of its status as a world power, Russia is also one of the countries that revitalizes their spatial capabilities and aspirations.

Less than a year ago, in April 2018, despite international sanctions, Vladimir Putin assured that Russia was planning to send a cosmonaut on the moon by 2030 and confirmed the upcoming completion of the new ferry. Fédératsia, the construction of a supervised rocket for flights to the moon and the construction of a new cosmodrome 700 square kilometers in Amur, near the border with China. This was not a new initiative, since in 2015 it was announced that Russia was resuming the space race.

In addition, it shares with other countries (Canada, Japan, the United States or the European Union) the development of an international station on the orbit of the Moon, to then land on the poles and build habitable modules for colonization. The first module would be launched in 2022. However, it remains to be seen if the rupture of relations between Russia and the West and the escalation of the war lead Russia to an independent space program or even associate with the Chinese program. At the day of today, China he appears as a more reliable and friendly partner as the West

Private companies

But as the capitalist world has erased borders and blurred nation-states, a large number of analysts are inclined to attribute an advantage in the space race to private initiatives. This is not surprising considering that in 2016, at most five companies had enough capital to be among the twenty most powerful nations in the world.

In this context, billionaires and big companies are also competing in the race for space. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson spend considerable sums to develop space tourism and earn revenue from human settlements on the Moon or Mars. And it's not a joke, because the world's most powerful rocket, Falcon Heavy, belongs to a private company (SpaceX).

The primary goal of private entrepreneurs is to reduce the cost of space travel by building reusable orbital rockets. So much Blue origin as SpaceX o Virgin Galactic They have trouble making the most of space and then conquering it. The first thing to do will be to recruit tourists into space, expand and monetize the business to continue to grow, not to mention the lucrative partnership with governments like the United States.

Perhaps, although at the moment everything is projection and intuitions, it will be minerals and water existing in the Moon and on Mars, the great energizers of the race for space. Thus, few predict that mining companies will employ the first inhabitants of space. Something that has been speculating with great intensity for years and has triggered a small "gold rush".

We do not inhabit the Moon or Mars, but we already have the intention of exhausting them and making them profitable. serious almost impossible to predictwhich country / country or company / companies will win or win that race or which country / country or society / societies will colonize or they will colonize the Moon or Marsbut it is not very difficult to guess what will be the end of our satellite, the red planet and all the places we reach.

The statements and opinions expressed in this article are binding only the author and do not necessarily represent the point of view of RT.