Top NASA administrator Bill Nelson warns that we’re racing the Chinese for control of the moon. If the Chinese win, they could claim “vast swaths” of prime real estate as their own.
Race for moon resources
Former astronaut and current NASA administrator Bill Nelson is convinced that the Chinese are up to no good on the moon. He’s also a Florida senator. It’s entirely possible, he notes, that “China would cordon off the most resource-rich areas of the lunar surface if they establish a presence there first.”
There are worse things that could happen but nobody mentions those. For instance, thanks to Maglev train technology, they could throw rocks at us. Ones that would hit with megaton range impact. That’s the real advantage to being at the top of Earth’s “gravity well.”
“It is a fact,” Nelson declares, “we’re in a space race.” It’s also true, he confirms, “that we better watch out that they don’t get to a place on the moon under the guise of scientific research.”
BREAKING: NASA chief says China could claim the Moon as its own territory if it beats U.S. to its lunar surface‼️😳 pic.twitter.com/H9hRjsINYV
— RapTV (@Rap) January 2, 2023
The reason he considers it so important is because “it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, ‘Keep out, we’re here, this is our territory.’”
We don’t need to look any further than the South China Sea to find evidence of the shady way the Chinese operate. The CCP “has routinely made claims of sovereignty over areas belonging to other countries.”
Why would the moon be any different? They have some good engineers and “China’s burgeoning space program succeeded in establishing a new space station earlier this year.”
Artemis I on track
America seems to have the lead, for now. NASA “has been working on its Artemis series of missions to the moon.” They’re taking things slow and safe with the testing. Recently an unmanned mission looped around the far side and splashed back down on schedule.
Artemis II and III missions are expected to show a lot of progress “toward more established activity on the moon.” We also have our eye on Mars. We’ll be racing Elon Musk on that one.
Chinese have invested heavily on “spaceflight and other rocket technology.” That’s no surprise considering that they’re openly in “an ongoing arms race with the U.S. and Russia as all three countries are currently developing hypersonic weapons.”
The full rotation of the moon via NASA pic.twitter.com/z8XsgTyAkt
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) January 2, 2023
Just because they don’t have anything that shows up on Western radar doesn’t mean they couldn’t slap something together quick in secret. The moon is a prize worth fighting dirty for.
The law is wide open on the subject. The only diplomatic agreement is the Moon Treaty. It “turns jurisdiction of all celestial bodies (including the orbits around such bodies) over to the participant countries. Thus, all activities would conform to international law, including the United Nations Charter.” Wikipedia notes that the problem is nobody important signed off on it.
“It has not been ratified by any state that engages in self-launched human spaceflight (e.g. the United States, Russia (or its predecessor the Soviet Union), or the People’s Republic of China) since its creation on December 18, 1979, and thus it has little to no relevancy in international law.“
