Star Bound №27: Reading Red Moon Rising
A New Book Contains Clues to the Second Trump Administration’s Space Policy
by Bruce McCandless III
Red Moon Rising, published earlier this year, has an agenda, which it also uses as its subtitle: How America Will Beat China on the Final Frontier. The book’s authors believe the United States is engaged in a second space race, this time with communist China taking the place of the U.S.S.R.
This is not exactly news.
Lots of Americans — including lots of Americans in the Biden administration — think the same thing. But Red Moon Rising co-author Greg Autry is a little better placed than most of us to make this pronouncement. He served in the first Trump Administration and will probably join Trump in some capacity during the second. He has advised the innovative start-up company Relativity Space, testified on space policy before Congress, and written extensively on space-related topics. He is smart, experienced, and connected, and he’s expected to have a voice in Trump’s policymaking regarding both space and China, which makes his opinions worth listening to. Co-author and Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro recently served jail time for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena, but in these topsy-turvy times, spending time in the pokey isn’t necessarily a disqualifier for White House service. Navarro is reportedly slated for a place in the next Trump administration as well.
As this is a space book, and Autry is the space expert, I assume his is the guiding voice. He starts by scare-mongering. This isn’t me, editorializing — Autry is open about it. In the first chapter of Red Moon Rising, he informs us that the Chinese are quite capable of launching laser and kinetic anti-satellite attacks, electromagnetic pulse detonations, nuclear attacks from space, and other horrors.
From this litany of possible catastrophes, Autry pivots to a long discussion of America’s first space race and how superior American technology and industry eventually beat the Soviets. It’s a succinct and well-paced, if somewhat one-sided recitation, with some interesting asides on, for example, the development and importance of solar panels in space, something readers may well have taken for granted all these years. There’s also a very occasional misstatement. Red Moon Rising claims that the space shuttle program ended in 2012, when in fact the last flight took place in 2011. The book states that sixteen astronauts died in shuttle accidents, when it was really fourteen. And there’s also a curious lack of appreciation shown for Soviet achievements. Yes, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were engaged in a “race,” but both countries were also engaged in some beautiful, risky experiments in space, and the Russians deserve credit for their ingenuity and perseverance.
The authors then celebrate the rise of commercial space companies, particularly SpaceX, which, they say, have essentially freaked out the Chinese, who have seen their remarkable progress in space exploration eclipsed by the innovations of Elon Musk and other space pirates here in the United States. Indeed, it’s hard to overstate the importance of SpaceX in the last decade and a half. As the authors imply, without Musk’s once-little, now-giant space company that could, the United States would be floundering, and perhaps already considered a second-class cosmic power.
But the race — and the China threat — isn’t over. In fact, say Autry and Navarro, it’s just beginning — and it could come to a head in the next two decades if China gets to the moon before we do. What happens if China outpaces us, and obtains a leadership position in space exploration and commercial exploitation? We will “fall into the obscurity of history as China’s Communist Party ascends to the heavens,” say the authors. Or, to put it in slightly different terms, “If China wins the race in space…the United States will be relegated to a backwater position for the rest of human history.”
Okay, there’s some hyperbole at work here. It is by no means clear that the first nation to harvest ice at the lunar south pole will have a lock on human destiny. And yes, helium-3 is a potentially valuable source of fuel for nuclear fusion reactors, but reality check: no such reactors currently exist. Nevertheless, Chinese ambitions in space are worth taking seriously. The Chinese space program is smart, determined, and patient. China has not historically been an expansionist power. The Russians tend to invade and conquer. Think of them as the Klingons of the Star Trek universe. The Chinese, like the Borg, much prefer to gradually envelop and assimilate. The author of this review lived in Hong Kong in the early nineteen nineties, just a few years before the former British colony was handed over to China. Despite all manner of promises from Beijing that Hong Kong’s cultural and political traditions would be maintained, life in that little corner of China has steadily become more and more like life in the rest of China. The Chinese Communist Party is no longer shy about its massive military might, and seems to be increasingly aggressive with respect to its disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea. If China is not our enemy, she is certainly our rival, and her taikonauts may well be on the moon before our astronauts manage to return.
In order to avoid such a development, and any unfortunate consequences that might ensue, the book concludes with a long list of prescriptions for the United States if we want to stay ahead of the Chinese. First on the list: BEAT CHINA TO THE MOON; next comes STAY ON THE MOON; and, finally, DEVELOP THE MOON. See a pattern? Red Moon Rising envisions the moon as a crucial way station to Mars and an important providing ground for all kinds of mining, energy development, and habitation projects. Despite being an ardent commercial space advocate, Autry is also a big booster of the Artemis program and its legacy contractor creations, including Boeing’s Space Launch System, or “SLS.” Whether this support for SLS will continue during a Musk-infused Trump II administration remains to be seen.
Another prescription for Space Race 2.0: EDUCATE, EDUCATE, EDUCATE. This is the weakest of the proposals. It gets all of one passive sentence: “Aerospace engineering, space business, space law, and space policy programs should be supported.” Supported by whom? And how? The authors don’t say. FREE THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND ENSURE OUR REGULATIONS ARE ALIGNED TO WIN. This is standard free market stuff, and of course arguable. While everyone (sorry, Mr. Bezos) wants Elon’s big rockets to succeed, it’s unclear how much environmental degradation we should be willing to trade for this success. Autry and Navarro suggest it should be quite a bit.
The authors also want the Space Force to take on a more active role and be freed from Air Force oversight, and for the Outer Space Treaty, signed when the United States was running what the authors call a “communist” centralized government space program, to be renegotiated to support “transferable and collateralizable real property rights for facilities on the Moon, at asteroids, and in desirable orbits.” Finally, GO NUCLEAR (Yes!) and GO SPACE SOLAR appear at the end of the list, and are sound prescriptions. One thing the authors leave out, and that I have argued in favor of for a while now, is increased support for the Indian space program. I would like to see India on the moon along with the U.S., China, and Russia and other, lesser powers. As the most populous nation in the world, with an ambitious and rapidly evolving space program, India might well create an effective counterweight to the presence of our former and present space rivals.
Let’s face it. Greg Autry and Peter Navarro don’t like China, and their book is an unabashedly one-sided call to arms. Even the authors admit that hey, the U.S. is winning Space Race 2.0 so far, but they are adamant that further effort is necessary. While it would be great if the American public — and the American Congress — supported space exploration for the beauty and science of it, many of us are more likely to be motivated to support NASA by the prospect of being preempted at the lunar poles by a communist power.
Is the thought of a red moon giving you the blues? While not all readers will subscribe to Autry and Navarro’s portrait of an inevitable, possibly violent conflict in the heavens with the Chinese Communist Party, the authors nevertheless make a compelling case for the importance of additional funding for and a focus on ensuring America’s continued leadership in cislunar space. And that should help keep the nation’s space programs — civilian, commercial, and military — in the pink.
