And what if China gets there first? How exactly would that benefit them, in a geopolitical sense?
Sorry, but if I have the choice of wasting that much resources just so I can brag about it a bit sooner than my opponent, or watch my opponent do so, while I use said resources more productively, I know what to do.
> And what if China gets there first? How exactly would that benefit them, in a geopolitical sense?
If China gets there first, the enormous amount of international credibility and resulting soft power that they will gain internationally, at the US's expense, will be immense and will be worth the resources they spend several times over.
> the enormous amount of international credibility and resulting soft power
You know what is giving China soft power? Funding projects around all of Africa.
You know what is not giving western countries soft power? Burning Billions on Space Programs that serve zero purpose and could achieve more with much less investments, if we just continued sending robots.
Again, I know where I would allocate my resources if I had a hand in this game.
I'm not a geopolitics expert, and I assume you're not either, so I'll just say what I feel. As an European, deep down my unconscious mental picture of the situation here is probably this: USA is a geopolitical and economic power, China is a far away country that assembles parts and devices for western companies. This mental picture is wrong and hilariously oversimplified (I know rationally that it's wrong), but this is the stereotype I've absorbed from my society.
If both counties actively tried to win, and China managed to build a Moon base before the US that would probably make a huge blow to that (subconscious) mental picture.
that's because the US and the rest of the west pretty much decided after 1990 that history had ended, even as their societies crumbled from the costs of the cold war.
the example of china's rise and eventual dominance disturbs that narrative but doesn't demolish it entirely. sinking a US carrier or building a moon base before white countries do would be concrete examples that they can't explain away.
> that would probably make a huge blow to that (subconscious) mental picture.
And?
Okay, so let's say this happens, and now some people think: "Wow China is more powerful in space than the US!".
What is the real world impact of this? Did Chinas army just get 10x more powerful? Does the CPP now own the moon? Did Chinas [economic challenges][1] suddenly disappear? Did their [demographic issues][2] suddenly improve?
No, of course not.
The only real world impact of this: China would now be faced with the choice between blowing billions upon billions of dollars anually for what is essentially a vanity project with little to no ROI, or find a way to abandon it quitely without too much public fanfare. And of course, the whole thing is constantly only one malfunctioning airlock away, from turning into a pile of dead astronauts and a complete PR desaster.
So please tell me, and you are completely right, I am not a geopolitics expert, in terms I can understand, what the specific and tangible benefits of building a Moon-/Mars-Base/NewMannedSpaceStation/etc. are supposed to be, in terms of geopolitics.
And sure, I can see some change to mental images, and yeah, that might e.g. attract some business that would otherwise be somewhere else, or make the odd contract negotiations go smoother. But at the end of the day, these advantages, such as they are, would still need to offset the pricetag of the whole show, and I don't believe they would.
> You know what is giving China soft power? Funding projects around all of Africa.
I don't disagree.
Are you suggesting that China will be satisfied with merely the amount of soft power that they are gaining from funding infrastructure projects in Africa and will not seek additional soft power through other routes?
I would assert that between the amount of soft power gained, and more, the amount of soft power lost by their rivals (the US), if China had the capability to create a moon base it would be entirely worthwhile for them to do so.
Thus, if the US wishes to prevent that loss of its own soft power, then it needs to beat China to the moon base.
> Are you suggesting that China will be satisfied with merely the amount of soft power that they are gaining from funding infrastructure projects in Africa and will not seek additional soft power through other routes?
No, I am not.
I am, however, suggesting that the amount of soft power gained through bragging rights along the lines of "We did it! We did it! We managed to to the same thing the US did in the 60s! And we only had to light a huge pile of money on fire to do it!!!" is kinda negligible when compared to, say, having direct financial influence in many developing countries, or having a couple additional aircraft carriers.
And sure, they could do both, but resources are finite. Every dollar pumped into a, technically unnecessary, moon base is a dollar less they can invest elsewhere.
Maybe weapons? Certainly you could hit speeds that would nullify any kind of missile defense, though MIRVs already accomplish that anyway.
Depending on where you established infrastructure on the moon, it might be pretty easy to conceal the things you're doing in space. You won't see anything launched from the other side, and anything leaving the moon is going to fall towards Earth, so may be difficult to detect (e.g. no heat signature).
The moon is also a pretty decent staging ground for the rest of the solar system, so getting there late means ceding any potential resource or technological advantages that being first might have attained.
There's also a slim possibility that there are things that can only be manufactured in low or zero gravity.
I think the last two reasons aren't a great justification, but anything that materially impacts geopolitics on Earth, as weapons systems and spying do, probably are if you think there's a credible threat that your adversary is capable of them. And that's probably a big part of why the US stopped going to the moon. The cost and risks didn't stack up when the US already had a pretty compelling technological lead, better intel, and the USSR never signalled that it was serious about going there.
China are serious, though, and the way they've vertically integrated the world's manufacturing base means they actually have a lead on the US in a number of areas. That's probably why there's suddenly a lot more urgency and credibility about claims of wanting to go back.
> Depending on where you established infrastructure on the moon, it might be pretty easy to conceal the things you're doing in space.
No it wouldn't be, because there is zero chance in hell of everyone else on Earth not realizing whats going on, if someone were suddenly busy launching all that machinery, building materials and weapons towards the Moon, not to mention hundreds of personnel with all their space suits, provisions, water, shelters, space poop collectors, etc.
Hiding something is pretty pointless, if the process of getting whatever it is to wherever it is hidden, is announced to the entire planet by shooting it into the sky on roaring pillars of fire.
> The moon is also a pretty decent staging ground for the rest of the solar system
The rest of what now?
There is Earth. There is the Moon. There is Mars. This is all the places in the solar system a human could, in theory, visit without immediately dying horribly. Maybe Phobos. Maybe.
The other planets are off limits: Mercury is worse than literal Hell. Venus is a hypercorrosive hothouse. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would instantly crush everything in their deep gravity envelopes, and most of their moons are highly radioactive hellholes. Not to mention that everything beyond Mars is not even theoretically reachable with a manned spacecraft as of right now.
So, that leaves Mars. A freeze-dried, irradiated, airless, toxic rock desert covered in microabrasive regolith, with too low gravity, no magnetic field to speak off, no available Nitrogen, and no resources that aren't found in abundance on Earth. And before anyone says "Land": May I present the [Gobi Desert][1], a 1.295 Million square kilometers large rock desert, smack in the middle of Asia. And while it is largely a cold, barren rock desert, it is still a paradise compared to Mars.
And even so, the Moon offers ZERO advantage as a "staging ground" for Missions to Mars, because, there is nothing on the Moon to be staged. Every kg of stuff that would be "staged" there, has to be first launched from Earth, so all a Moon Base does, is add another launch to an already costly equation.
> No it wouldn't be, because there is zero chance in hell of everyone else on Earth not realizing whats going on, if someone were suddenly busy launching all that machinery, building materials and weapons towards the Moon, not to mention hundreds of personnel with all their space suits, provisions, water, shelters, space poop collectors, etc.
We're talking about a permanent manned presence on the moon. If I have that and you don't, you can watch me launch from Earth all you like. I can build a launch facility on the side of the moon that you can't see without circumnavigating it, and I can conduct launches from it that you don't know about. To go to the extreme, I could launch nukes on ballistic trajectories that you would be blind to.
> And even so, the Moon offers ZERO advantage as a "staging ground" for Missions to Mars, because, there is nothing on the Moon to be staged. Every kg of stuff that would be "staged" there, has to be first launched from Earth, so all a Moon Base does, is add another launch to an already costly equation.
This is the kind of confidently ignorant response that is thankfully not too common on hackernews.
The moon has zero atmosphere, a trivial escape velocity, and is a huge mass that can be built on, within Earth's gravity well. Using a mass driver to launch from the moon around the Earth means you would need to carry less propellant on board your spacecraft, because in the best case scenario, you only need to carry the fuel to slow you down. Launching from Earth, you need X + Y fuel, where X gets you the delta-V to get to your destination from Earth, and Y is the fuel required to slow you down and land. Launching from the moon you need U + V, where U is the fuel that gets you to the moon, and V is the fuel you need to slow you down, because you don't need to launch from the moon using propellant. If X > U, launching from the moon is better. The faster you want to go, the more things tip in favor of launching from the moon, because you can keep adding stages and front-loading energy into your launch in a way that is impossible on Earth. Shit, if you launch around the Earth you can even regain some of the energy you put towards getting to the moon in the first place, because the Earth's gravity field accelerates you, and your propellant has potential energy as well as chemical energy (i.e. do an Oberth maneuver).
I'm well aware of the realities of the other bodies in the solar system. That doesn't mean we'll never want to go to any of them. If we do, going to the moon first makes a lot of sense.
If China gets there first, they will accomplish half of the above stated number two reason, reproduced below.
> The second reason we are going to the moon so that we can put the first person of color and the first woman on the moon. That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose.
Sorry, but if I have the choice of wasting that much resources just so I can brag about it a bit sooner than my opponent, or watch my opponent do so, while I use said resources more productively, I know what to do.