America’s space community is having a phony and destructive debate about whether the U.S. should continue its current focus on returning astronauts to the Moon or switch to Mars. The chattering class is accusing Elon Musk of distracting President Donald Trump from the Moon with a riskier path of going directly to Mars. Ultimately, they want to provoke a fratricidal fight between two parts of the Trump coalition.
This distraction is a cynical ploy to delay needed reforms and allow the deep state in NASA and its heritage aerospace contractor community to continue to fail to deliver real space achievement while blaming politicians or the public for not providing infinite budgets or 100 percent unchanging policy.
Furthermore, the phony fight between the Moon and Mars is entirely unnecessary. Cynics assert that the U.S. can only do one thing at a time in space, at least in part because they presume that (1) space is primarily about science and national prestige, and therefore (2) space is mostly or even exclusively the domain of NASA, a civilian science/research agency.
Neither of these have been true since well before the first Trump administration. America now has a thriving commercial space industry investing billions of private dollars every year to pursue economic opportunities throughout cislunar space, giving federal space agencies huge financial and technical leverage. And the U.S. now has a military service dedicated to using space to support terrestrial military and diplomatic needs – and dominating space as a new warfighting domain.
Commercially, today there are two companies developing systems for landing humans on the Moon. Those same companies have already test-flown reusable heavy lift launch vehicles. At least three companies are already sending robotic landers to the Moon, some of them scalable to serve larger logistical needs. Many of these can also support aggressive robotic and human exploration of Mars. One system was intentionally designed and sized to support human missions to Mars. Several companies looking to replace and expand on the capabilities of the International Space Station can also help build modular bases on the Moon and then apply those lessons to Mars habitats.
Likewise, NASA now has strategic partners in other federal agencies that can enable and spur progress as part of a whole of government national strategy in space. For example, the Department of Transportation is pursuing a second wave of reforming its launch and re-entry regulations to ease approvals of high-cadence reusable launch activities. The Department of Energy is working with industry to enable smaller, safer modular nuclear reactors which also have uses on other planetary surfaces. They eventually may even speed up transport to and from Mars. The Department of Commerce is developing a civilian Space Situational Awareness System to help manage the growing satellite traffic in Earth orbit and allow the Space Force to focus on monitoring and countering adversaries’ actions in space. DARPA and the Space Force are looking at how to protect national security assets and private economic development activities in Earth orbital and cislunar space.
More needs to be done to broaden and deepen our commercial space industry. NASA must transform itself from a builder and owner-operator of space infrastructure to an explorer and user. The Space Force needs to fully separate from the Air Force because while the early aerospace industry evolved from aviation, the space domain is not an extension of air. Other agencies need to step up and play constructive roles to complement NASA and the Space Force and help enable commercial space growth.
Space exploration is now a multi-event team sport with many star players and experienced coaches, so the question is not whether NASA should continue towards the Moon or switch its focus to Mars. The right strategic question is: does America want to usher in a golden age by strategically dominating the solar system or are we content to barely outpace other nations’ symbolic achievements?
If Jeff Bezos wants to develop and settle the Moon and Musk wants to occupy Mars, the right leadership strategy for America is not to choose but embrace the power of “and.”
What is important about Bezos’s and Musk’s respective visions are their similarity as modern refinements of President John F. Kennedy’s dream of a New Frontier. I want America back on the Moon – and also going to Mars. More importantly, I want hundreds, and then many thousands, of Americans on the Moon and a growing human presence on Mars, in Earth orbit, and in free space. Manifest Destiny in space isn’t a bad thing in 2025. We aren’t taking planets and asteroids away from anyone.
An America First space agenda should be nothing less than America developing and settling every part of the solar system that makes economic or military sense – and inviting the rest of free humanity to join us.
We can’t afford the distraction of being pulled into a stupid fight over space destinations when the real issue is what kind of space destiny our children will inherit. We want to bequeath them – literally – all of the above.
