The SpaceCom Column

The short-term goal of returning humans to the lunar surface has dramatically shifted to a longer-term race to establish a permanent presence on the Moon within a decade. Three entities are in the race and anything can happen over the next 10 years to shuffle the deck. Beyond the direct competition between two private companies and one nation-state orchestrating multiple firms, there are already winners and losers emerging in the larger discussion of what to do with space.  

Our competitors for building and operating a permanent lunar presence are clear at the moment. Blue Origin, SpaceX, and China. From a national perspective, the United States has two capable private entities that are developing leading-edge technologies in the aerospace sector, while China is still mastering a number of technologies needed to reach and establish a presence on the Moon. Success is by no means guaranteed, but the U.S. bench is strong and will likely be supported by multinational public-private partnerships with European nations and Japan. 

Blue Origin is the clear leader in terms of development, with its first lunar lander expected to be launched later this year and a clear path to a reusable human-rated vehicle. The company has clearly indicated that processing lunar resources into usable materials has been on its roadmap through progress on Blue Alchemist in-space resource utilization program; acquisition of Honeybee Robotics; and its partnership with Luxembourg on the Oasis-1 mission to generate high-resolution maps of lunar water ice, Helium-3, and other materials needed for building a lunar base and, more importantly, a sustainable lunar economy.   

If that’s not enough, Blue Origin shut down its New Shepard suborbital program at the beginning of this year for a period of at least two years to focus on lunar operation and there’s talk of the company working on a reusable second stage in combination with its heavy(er) lift version of New Glenn. The space systems company probably has several projects that it hasn’t announced because it doesn’t need to promote an IPO. 

SpaceX essentially discovered the value of the Moon this month by vowing to build a Moon City in a decade, a sudden pivot from years focusing on getting Starship built for launch to Mars, with representations last year that up to five Starships would be launched to the Red Planet in 2026. Instead, we now have a promise that an uncrewed Starship will land on the Moon in early 2027, a very interesting date since a fully reusable Starship v3.0 has yet to fly, much less demonstrate in-orbit fuel transfer between two vehicles and the flight rates necessary to fill the tanks of a lunar lander.  

The problem is that Musk has also vowed to deploy 30,000 Starlink block 3.0 satellites and one million AI data center satellites, the latter another recent announcement and, to some degree, dependent on lunar resources and the construction of a mass driver to hurdle satellites into space. Exactly who will pay for the construction of a million AI data center satellites and what is the return on investment for said satellites? A successful SpaceX fall IPO will not raise enough cash for anything other than a small downpayment for construction of a self-sustaining lunar city.  

Two other areas of concern are also present. First, Starship remains the hammer to any transportation problem, and it has yet to be fully demonstrated that a tail-landing lunar Starship is an adequate configuration for deploying large cargos at high frequency on the moon. Second, unlike Blue Origin, SpaceX doesn’t have a broad portfolio of starting technologies for mining and processing materials on an industrial scale. One might argue that Musk-adjacent holdings in the Boring Company and Tesla might provide partial pieces, but Boring just digs tunnels while Tesla’s humanoid robots aren’t designed for a harsh lunar environment or optimized for moving dirt like a bulldozer is.  

Bringing up the pack is ever-patient China. It is steadily working to master the technology of reusable rocketry and has clocked admirable human experience in Low Earth Orbit through the operation of a series of space stations. It has also placed landers on the Moon and conducted sample return, with ongoing lunar technology development and demonstrations planned in the months and years ahead.  

China expects to land its first crewed mission on the lunar surface sometime in the 2030s and has built an international organization to support an International Lunar Research Station it plans to build with Russia. It remains to be seen how reliable of a partner Russia will be, given its turbulent economic circumstances and its challenged aerospace industry.  

A permanent manned presence on the Moon, regardless of Russian contributions, would be a major coup for China, providing it with the ability to demonstrate both technological prowess and international leadership. Should Blue Origin or SpaceX falter, China will be there to step up. 

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