Space Race 2.0
Mankind’s first exploration of space occurred during the Cold War and the great power struggle between the USA and the Soviet Union. As unfortunate as it is, it seems that one of our species’ greatest achievements needed to have conflicts and the threat of war to get moving forward.
After Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the impulse to go to space faded a little. Decade after decade, more years accumulated without a single human having walked on the Moon.
But a new space race is heating up, and like the first one, it is fueled by the growing rivalry between the USA and the new rising superpower, China. With Russia, heir of the Soviet Union, ready to join forces with China.
When discussing the recent progress in space exploration, we tend to focus either on the short term, like the impressive landing by SpaceX a few days ago.
Or the very long term, like how we could build a global space-based economy or the infrastructures required to get there, including supplying unlimited green energy to Earth.
Less often discussed in the immediate next 1-2 decades, as well as the plans of non-Western public agencies and private companies.
Space Stations
ISS
After the end of the Russian space station Mir in 2001, only the ISS (International Space Station) was still in orbit with astronauts.
Source: NASA
This aging piece of equipment started in 1998, is increasingly hard to maintain and prone to failure. As a result, it is expected to be decommissioned by 2030 at the latest.
In the summer of 2024, NASA announced that SpaceX had been selected to develop and deliver the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle.
China’s Tiandong
The ISS has been recently joined by China Tiandong (meaning Celestial Palace) space station, the construction of which started in 2021.
Source: Wikipedia
China decided to build its own station following the Wolf Amendment, a 2011 US law in practice banning China from collaborating with the US, Europe, or Japan in space exploration, especially in the ISS.
It is now widely seen as a bad idea, and it has triggered China to develop its own capability in space launch and space station construction. Tiandong is now opening for non-Chinese astronauts, most likely first its Russian partners, who have been instrumental in speeding up China’s progress in space.
China plans to double the station from 3 to 6 modules in the coming years. This would bring its mass to 180 metric tons, or just 40% of the ISS’s 450 tons.
Source: Wikipedia
Discussions online have also focused on how more streamlined the interior design of Tiandong is compared to the ISS, but this is likely a little unfair, as Tiandong benefited from much more recent IT technology and from the experience of Mir and the ISS construction.
Source: Reddit
Tiandong will give experience to China’s taikonaut, the Chinese word for astronaut, the way Russian used kosmonaut, and be used to perform scientific missions.
It will also service a Hubble-like space telescope called Xuntian (“survey of the heavens.”), which will share the space station’s orbit and be provided by Tiandong repairs, maintenance, and future upgrades.
“The Xuntian telescope has been the most important scientific project since the launch of our country’s space station program. It is a scientific facility that the Chinese astronomical community has eagerly anticipated, and a scientific facility representing the state-level high tech in astronomy.
Hubble may see a sheep but the CSST sees thousands, all at the same resolution,”
Zhou Jianping – Chief designer of the China manned space program
Russian Station
Since the end of Mir, Russia has been a key partner in the ISS program, reflective of a new era of a more limited budget post-Soviet Union, and better international relations.
The Ukraine war has been weighing heavily on this since, and in 2024 announced plans to exit the ISS program, and build its own 4-modules space station. The first module will be launched by 2025, with the 4 main modules attached by 2030 and 2 others by 2033.
Source: Payload
This is an ambitious plan and illustrates the intent of Moscow to stay an independent partner to China, and not rely entirely on it regarding space exploration. It might however suffer from budget constraints if the war in Ukraine persists, or if the Russian economy slows down. It will also be highly dependent on the success of the recently tested heavy launcher Angara A5.
Fly Us To The Moon
Besides space stations, the Moon is the primary concern of the new space race, with both NASA and its international partners, as well as Russia and China, planning to build manned bases that will be permanently occupied.
This is due to a few key points that make the Moon very attractive for a first step in interplanetary colonization.
Proximity
The first argument to develop our first space base on the Moon is that it is relatively close to Earth. Contrary to what could expected, this does not reduce by very much the total amount of rocket launches or energy required to reach it. Once in orbit, everything in the solar system is “close” in terms of energy required.
However, it is a much shorter trip. This has multiple advantages:
- Less travel time means much less radiation exposure and less need for heavy shielding of the transit spaceship.
- Bringing extra supplies in an emergency or evacuating a sick or injured astronaut is quicker.
- There is almost no communication lag (1.25 seconds), which allows for almost instant communication and real-time conversation, as well as assistance with teleoperated systems.
Gravity
The gravity of the Moon is 1/6th of Earth’s. This is not much, but this might help to reduce the negative health effects of microgravity like on space stations.
It actually could be a gold mine of information to understand what low, but non-zero gravity does to the human body in the long-term, something still not understood. And obliviously this is a very important data to understand if we could one day settle Mars.
It also makes everything from manufacturing to maintenance and daily life easier. Items fall down, liquids and food do not float around, etc.
Metallic Regolith
Many imagine the surface of the Moon being made of a dusty white rock. Instead, the surface of the Moon, especially the top 15 meters (16 yards) is made of a fine abrasive dust from meteorite bombardment, called regolith.
This regolith is made mostly of oxygen (43%) and silicon (20.1%), but also a lot of metals: 12.5% iron, 7.4% aluminum, 6.1 magnesium, and 1.8% titanium. This means that it could provide, straight for the picking at the surface, all the metals we would need to build large habitats and solar panels for a Moon Base.
It could even provide more metals than we need to build solar panels to power Earth, or large spaceships for mass transits to Mars.
And it is possible to relatively easily smelt it and refining using local resources. For more information, you can check the excellent (and long) video by the channel Astrum on the topic:
Airlessness
Because the Moon is airless, it will likely never be a place with billions of inhabitants. But this also carries a few major advantages.
The first one is that smelting of regolith metal in a hard vacuum can be done by turning them into gases. This can be done at temperatures below 1,000°C, easy to reach with solar concentrators.
Another advantage of having no air combined with low gravity is that leaving the Moon’s surface is much easier than leaving Earth’s. While on Earth, mass drivers, a sort of high-speed catapulting spaceships in orbit, are still science fiction, we could probably build one of the Moon tomorrow with the right budget.
Combined with the local material abundance, it means that it might make more sense for the bulk of material needed for space exploration to be mined and manufactured on the Moon.
NASA Moon Plans
NASA’s plan for the Moon is covered by the Artemis missions, starting with Artemis I up to Artemis IV, with the building of a permanent Moon base, as well as a space station in the Moon’s orbit, the Lunar Gateway.
Source: NASA
The plan is for one mission per year, with 4 astronauts each time, 2 in orbit and 2 on the Moon itself.
Source: The Planetary Society
Delays Pilling Up
A recurring issue with the Artemis program is delays in the planned schedule. In 2020, Artemis II & III were already expected for 2024.
A key issue is the SLS (Space Launch System), a new rocket built by the large defense & aerospace contractors Boeing, Aerojet Rocketdyne (part of L3Harris), Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. SLS’ total development costs have exploded to $100B, or $12m per day, and experienced several failures during testing. As a non-reusable rocket, it also increases the budget of the Moon missions significantly.
The lunar lander, or Human Landing System (HLS), is also getting delayed, which was assessed to have a 70% chance of being ready by 2028. Meanwhile, the Artemis rover team from Lockheed Martin is being replaced by Leidos Employees.
The closest deadline for humans to return to the Moon is now by 2026, with lunar habitats (Foundation Habitat and Mobile Habitat) launched by 2032.
Overall the repeated delays and massive cost overruns have impacted NASA’s reputation and made many space enthusiasts despair of when would Artemis actually be happening.
Russia’s & China’s Moon Plans
In 2021, China announced a plan to build a Moon base jointly with Russia, as well as collaborate with a series of other countries mostly in Asia and Africa.
Source: Wikipedia
It follows the recent major success of the Chinese space agency with the Chang’e 6 probe, which brought the first-ever sample of lunar rock from the far side of the Moon.
The Chang’e-7 mission, scheduled for 2026, will survey the south pole, which is the site selected for the future Moon base.
Chang’e-8 will be launched in 2028 to carry out experiments on using lunar resources for in-situ manufacturing.
The public plan is much less detailed than the Artemis program. We, however know a few things:
- It will be divided into 3 phases and require 5 missions from super-heavy launchers still in development.
- The first phase will be dedicated to scientific measurements and local resources.
- The second phase will build the basic supporting elements and the first manned landing remotely.
- The third phase, likely around 2045, will build the actual base ready to receive more astronauts and scale up the facility.
- The idea is to use each Chang’e mission to develop one by one the modules of the required technology, like landing on the South Pole and exploring it, how to use local resources, etc.
- It is clear that China is counting on progress on its launcher technology in the meantime, including reusability, to help build the station.
Source: Techeblog
You can also see the first renders of the planned Moon base in this video from the Chinese state media (in Chinese):
Nuclear Energy
A major contribution of Russia to the program would be its expertise in nuclear energy, especially miniaturized reactors. It is expected to reach as much as 1MW (1,000 kW).
This might also be done in collaboration with India, a new ambitious lunar nation, since its 2023 robotic mission on the Moon with Chandrayaan-3, making it the 5th nation to achieve it.
Nights on the Moon last 14 days, which could be crucial for any large-scale occupation that will struggle to rely solely on solar power.
It can be remarked that NASA is also planning to use nuclear energy, but at a much smaller scale, with Rolls Royce’s 50-100 kW micro-reactors.
Lunar Economic Zone
China has a very ambitious plan for space exploration and the Moon colonization, with a very Chinese view focused on economic development instead of “scientifically pure” space exploration.
It notably proposed establishing an Earth-Moon space economic zone and has drawn up a roadmap for it with an annual “total output value of more than US$10 trillion” by around 2050.
Lunar Mass Driver
If this plan sounds extremely far-reaching, it’s because it is.
The multi-trillion-dollar Earth-Moon economy imagined by Chinese planners and researchers would potentially include helium-3, an ultra-rare element that might make nuclear fusion easier to achieve (with no neutron emissions).
“Just 20 tons of helium-3 could meet China’s yearly electricity demand. While Earth has only around 0.5 tons of helium-3, the lunar soil is estimated to contain 1 million tons—enough to power the world’s energy needs for over a thousand years.
Lunar soil has enough helium-3 to power the world for over a thousand years”
Source: SCMP
To bring back these resources, China plans to use a mass driver working essentially like a very big rotating hammer. This is very similar to the Earth-based launch envisioned by the company SpinLaunch.
But where the need to create a vacuum and then break it safely is a major issue for SpinLaunch, this is not an issue on the airless Moon. It is easier as gravity is just 1/6th of Earth.
Source: SpinLaunch
They expect that the mass driver could reduce launch material from the Moon by 10x.
The same technology could be used for solar power satellites or bulk material to build and fill large cargo ships to Mars.
In general, it seems that China has a vision to see the moon’s exploration and bases to ultimately pay for themselves.
Mars
Most of the Moon bases are viewed by all parties as stepping stones toward Martian exploration. However, for both NASA and China/Russia, this is a rather distant goal.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is looking to perform in-orbit refueling next year, after the success of catching mid-landing the newly tested Starship. This will be a necessary step for any travel beyond Earth’s direct orbit, especially toward the Moon or Mars.
Source: Elon Musk
He expected that humans on Mars could be achieved as soon as 2028, putting it strongly at odds with the Moon plans by all public space agencies.
This is likely an occurrence of the famous “Elon time”, with deadlines a little too short to happen in real life.
At the same time, if Starship performs as expected, there is no reason, except budgetary limits, to see Mars as out of reach. The issue might be much more about building a survivable habitat for Mars for the astronauts to survive their stay than the travel itself.
Will SpaceX take it upon itself to bring space exploration to new landmarks without NASA?
Rockets
SpaceX
The remarkable achievement of SpaceX in reusable launcher technology, now crowned by Starship’s recent success, has been putting the USA firmly ahead of its competitors.
In particular, it has caused a complete collapse of launch costs, with virtually all the other rockets unprofitable and commercially nonviable suddenly. Hence the growing criticism about NASA’s stubborn reliance on SLS.
If Spaceship can keep its edge, it might grab the immense majority of the space launch market and also become the primary option for reaching the Moon and Mars in a revamped Artemis program, giving up on SLS.
Chinese Launchers
Long March Launchers
China’s state space program relies on the Long March rocket family, with the future super-heavy-lift Long March 9 in development expected to lift payloads of ultimately 140 tons to LEO (in its final version) and 44 tons to Mars.
Its first test launch is planned for 2030. It is expected to have a reusable first stage, with full reusability achieved in 2040.
Source: Orbital Today
Private Chinese Companies
Inspired by SpaceX, entrepreneurs in China are looking to emulate Musk’s success by building private rocket companies cutting through the bureaucracy and public procurement that seems to inflate costs so much. This is actually a large ecosystem at this point:
Source: Andrew Jones/SpaceNews
We can mention in more detail a few of these companies:
Investing In Space Exploration
Space is a very established industry experiencing a rebirth and explosive growth on the back of reusable rockets. We discussed how this will create whole opportunities in our article “Reusable Rockets To Create Multiple New Markets By Lowering Costs Drastically”.
The current space market is $443B. More speculative (but potentially very lucrative) ideas like asteroid mining, space tourism & hypersonic flight could add another $350B in revenues, to which can be added a forecast of satellite-based Internet worth $17B, as well as military applications and subsidized Moon bases, scientific projects, etc.
You can invest in space-related companies through many brokers, and you can find on this website our recommendations for the best brokers in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, as well as many other countries.
If you are not interested in picking specific space-related companies, you can also look into ETFs like ARK Space Exploration & Innovation ETF (ARKX) or VanEck Space Innovators UCITS ETF (JEDI) to capitalize on the growth of the space sector as a whole.
SpaceX
Despite progress made by companies like Rocket Lab and the small army of Chinese private companies, SpaceX still reigns supreme in the reusable rocket space. Other firms like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin or the defense/aerospace mastodons have so far failed to move at SpaceX’s pace despite larger budgets.
Reusable rockets are likely to be from now on the only commercially viable design. Non-reusable rocket programs might be kept alive with taxpayer money in the USA, China, or Russia, but SpaceX is now the standard for the whole industry.
Source: Ark Invest
This also means that even if Starship makes launch costs cheaper, SpaceX does not need Starship to be priced accordingly, at least not fully, as long as its competitors are far behind.
This could allow SpaceX to capture a larger part of the value created and reinvest this amount into further growth and new projects, for example, by providing better alternatives to existing offers for Moon bases, interplanetary spaceships, power satellites, etc.
Starlink
Besides an ever-increasing dominance in the launch market through Starship, Starlink is the other big change happening to SpaceX.
The space-based Internet service has now reached 4 million users in September 2024, adding 1 million in just 4 months. It has also been reducing the barrier to entry by cutting the price for the Starlink terminal from $499 to $299 (in the US).
Poorly connected but fast developing areas like South and South-East Asia are likely going to be large markets as well. It already was newly approved in Indonesia in May 2024, following the Philippines and Malaysia.
Starlink could soon be deployed in new countries, such as South Korea, in 2025. It could also reach India relatively soon, although no date has been announced.
Starlink was estimated to bring $6.8B in revenue in 2024 before the even quicker-than-expected growth seen so far.
As an additional benefit, Starlink launches generally occupy the “dead space” in SpaceX rocket launches already used by paying customers or for launches booked by paying satellite customers.
So it helps keep the rockets going, reducing costs through economy of scale, while also creating a new recurrent revenue stream.
A lot of SpaceX’s near future was bet on Starlink, also because it will ultimately need Starship to maintain at a cheap cost the constellation.
Another additional benefit of Starship is that it is large enough to accept the next generation of Starlink satellites, 10x bigger (and is the only large enough rocket in existence). These would be orbiting in a much lower orbit and offer even better latency and larger debit at gigabit speed.
Defense Business
The Pentagon has been discussing with SpaceX the deployment of a military-only version of Starlink dubbed Starshield.
This goes after civilian-grade Starlink satellites & terminals have proven to be very useful in the front lines of the Ukraine war, and a long collaboration between the DoD and the company, notably to lift military satellites.
Having high bandwidth, low latency services on a mobile maritime platform allowed U.S. and Swedish Marines to prosecute fire missions and provide reliable and relevant information throughout the battlespace”,
Capt. Quinn T. Hemler – Assistant operations officer with G-6 communications, Marine Corps.
Typically, such projects are very secretive, but very lucrative as well, so investors in SpaceX might greatly benefit from it.
Transportation
Starship could also be able to perform point-to-point travel throughout the surface of the Earth, making it a potential hypersonic travel method at some point in the future.
This could have obvious large economic implications in the civilian market, with travel time cut from 22 hours to just 2 hours.
It also has military applications that have already been considered of great interest by US military planners, especially in logistics and rapid intervention.
Valuation
SpaceX’s latest valuation is estimated to be over $200 billion.
The company is, for now, private. You can learn how it can still be possible for investors to access SpaceX shares in our dedicated article “Investing in SpaceX Stock | How to Buy Pre-IPO Shares”.
It might also be possible that Starlink gets IPOed as a separate company with a large SpaceX ownership, but this has been dismissed as “not the priority” for now by SpaceX management, probably not while Starlink’s growth is explosive (leading to later higher IPO price).
Overall, SpaceX seems on its way to becoming a trillion-dollar company thanks to its current quasi-monopoly on the launch market and as the space industry keeps growing exponentially each time launch cost is reduced:
- Falcon 9 made satellite launches are cheaper and more numerous.
- Falcon Heavy made Internet orbital constellation profitable.
- Starship might make orbital solar power and Moon manufacturing possible.
Conclusion
While the Cold War era space programs were rather similar on both sides, each with the same set of goals (first satellite, first man in orbit, first man on the Moon), the new space race seems a little different.
On one side, we have NASA with a bit smaller, but more near term plans (at least before the delays) to bring back astronauts on the Moon, and have for them a permanent base where they can stay longer than previous Apollo missions.
Ultimately, NASA’s goals are still testing technology and conducting science-driven exploration of the Moon.
On the other side, the Chinese-Russian program aims for a much more distant time frame (2035-2045), but with seemingly much more ambitious goals. This includes a 10-20x larger energy production through advanced SMRs, regolith mining operations, and mass drivers to exploit the lunar resources and kickstart a trillion-dollar space economy.
In parallel, private ambitions are running high, with SpaceX at the forefront, closely followed by a few Western and many Chinese startups.
In that respect, maybe the new space race will be as much between talented visionaries (and multibillionaires) than between nations, in itself potentially the symbol of a new era.
