AEI Senior Fellow Todd Harrison has an interesting new working paper on space policy. We particularly enjoyed the (timely) framing: “It’s Not a Space Race, It’s the Space Olympics.”

The simple, but powerful idea is this: during the Cold War Space Race, the stakes were simple: who can go furthest fastest in space? It was quite literally a race.

Now it is more like the Olympics, with multiple events in which various countries can medal. You can win gold in one and lose another. Harrison highlights three main events: commercial space, military space, and Lunar exploration.

Harrison points out that the US has a very strong lead in commercial space, with 81% of commercial satellites and 86% of global launch capacity. Sadly for the French, Arianespace, which used to be the global leader in commercial space, has stood still while SpaceX overtook them–but they are still in the game.

Meanwhile, military space is closely contested between the US and China. Harrison argues that Russia is falling behind. He notes that the US, Russia, China, and India have anti-satellite weapons. (Where is the French Space Force?)

The most interesting segment is the one concerning Lunar Exploration. Harrison writes: “Perhaps the most talked about event in the Space Olympics is the lunar exploration competition. The stakes in this competition are the broadest and most far reaching because the coalition of nations that first establishes a permanent presence on the Moon will set precedent for how lunar exploration—and the overall deep space economy—will operate for decades to come.”

There are two main forces in the running. Quote:

“The US-led Artemis program includes a coalition of 43 nations and aims to land a crew on the Moon in 2026, although this date seems increasingly unrealistic. China and Russia are partnering to build the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). They plan to land a crew on the Moon in the early 2030s and have so far attracted a coalition of 11 nations. Both the Artemis and ILRS programs plan to land near the lunar south pole where deposits of ice are likely to be more accessible, which is key to making propellant to refuel rockets and creating a sustainable presence on the Moon.
“While the United States has an advantage in partners, China arguably has the momentum in lunar exploration with the recent success of it Chang’e-6 robotic landing and sample return mission from the far side of the Moon—a feat NASA has yet to achieve.”

There are many problems with the Artemis program, however. Starting with the name. The choice of the female huntress goddess of Greece was a clear and deliberate message: “We want to do a DEI version of Apollo.” Cultural rot starts at the top. NASA, and its largely left-wing administrators and political backers, clearly view Artemis as its way to show up Elon Musk, now a political villain, and prove that government bureaucracies with DEI recruitment can do better than private entrepreneurs.

And the results have been sadly predictable by all non-ideologues: Artemis I, the uncrewed test flight, was delayed multiple times before finally launching in November 2022; Artemis II, the first crewed mission around the Moon, has been pushed back from 2024 to September 2025; and Artemis III, planned to land astronauts on the lunar surface, is now scheduled for September 2026, delayed from its original 2025 target, and as Harrison points out that date too is already considered unrealistic.

The program has suffered from many technical issues: problems with Orion spacecraft components, including batteries related to the launch abort system and a design flaw in the life support system’s valve circuits; problems with the heat shield during Artemis I reentry, requiring further investigation; problems with developing and integrating various systems for crewed missions.

And the program is massively over budget, but that almost goes without saying.

In spite of this, Harrison recommends doubling down on the Artemis program. We are skeptical about this.

Harrison views the “coalition of 43 nations” as an asset, and it may well be in a geopolitical sense, but it is certainly not confidence-building in terms of actually getting a rocket to the Moon, since these types of multi-nation coalitions to build a complex technical project mainly add layers of bureaucracies and veto points (remember the F-35?).

Instead of trying to build a large coalition at the outset, the US should follow the Airbus model: France started largely on her own, enlisting a reluctant Germany as a financial backer; once Airbus was proven a success, other European nations clamored to get in and were graciously allowed in one by one. Virtually every successful “European” project started in this way, with one or two leading countries starting on their own and then enlisting other partners as the program grew and matured (Erasmus, the vastly successful pan-European student exchange program, is another example of this model). Meanwhile, virtually every EU project which required getting 27 countries aboard before doing anything ended up bogged in political-bureaucratic quicksand. It is a fundamental principle of human life that complex projects, and particularly complex engineering projects, need a single leader and cannot be effectively steered by committee.

If Lunar exploration is key to the future of space, and if the best the US has is Artemis, it may be time for the rest of us to brush up on our Mandarin or Russian…

A much better approach would probably be to create an open contest, open to all actors, public and private, American and allied, to build a partially reusable rocket capable of safely landing and returning cargo to the Moon for a non-crazy unit cost. Let NASA, Arianespace, SpaceX, Jeff Bezos, and whoever else, compete on an equal basis.

The US government (and here, it may be useful to bring in foreign partners, especially European and Japanese) could set up an equity fund that, mimicking Israel’s famous Yozma fund and France’s less-famous (but impressive) Banque publique d’investissement, would co-invest with private investors in space startups that want to take on the challenge. The fund would simply match private investment on the same terms, that way no “picking winners and losers”, just increasing the impact of private capital.

The contest would be overseen by a blue-ribbon committee of 5 or 7 unimpeachable personalities who would award multibillion prizes at every stage of the contest. Their decisions, which would have to be public, including minority reports, would not be subject to appeal except to the Supreme Court (and, of course, the court of public opinion).

That’s our recommendation for winning gold in the Lunar Event of the Space Olympics.

Harrison’s recommendations regarding the other events are full of good sense: “The US government should start by being a better customer for commercial space services. This means creating the conditions for the next SpaceX to emerge organically rather than forcing it to sue its way into the market. In the military space competition, we should continue to use our commercial space advantage to build military space systems that are larger in number, more advanced in capabilities, and more resilient to attack. We must also redouble efforts to develop offensive counterspace capabilities of our own because the best way to deter a war in space is to be ready to fight and win that war.”

We also heartily agree with his conclusion:

“The United States has a window of opportunity to build and extend its lead in nearly all areas of the competition in space, but it must act quickly and in partnership with like-minded nations to remain competitive in all events. Unlike the Summer Olympics, however, the Space Olympics does not repeat every four years. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity […] It requires the same kind of focus and determination we see in top Olympic athletes, and the Olympic moto should be our guide: citius, altius, fortius. Faster, higher, stronger!”

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