Entrepreneurial space companies can outperform any competition between NASA and China. By the time NASA or Chinese astronauts reach the moon, Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, says he will send people to Mars. Even if Mr. Musk’s announcements become too optimistic, the future of space exploration will not be dominated by national space agencies.
Some hope that competition between China and the United States could turn into cooperation. But NASA is currently limited to working directly with the Chinese space agency or Chinese-owned companies. That provision was introduced in 2011 by Frank Wolf, a Republican congressman from Virginia, into NASA’s Finance Act, which seeks to punish China for its human rights record and to protect American aerospace technology.
In the near future, planetary scientists in the United States may be able to stay out of the mass of science from rocks collected by Chang-5, which were much smaller than those that came from a lunar region earlier.
Although the law does not bar scientists other than NASA from working with their Chinese counterparts, it does prevent Chinese scientists from seeing the lunar rocks that NASA astronauts brought back during the Apollo mission, and China is likely to make this return.
“Obviously the United States prohibits cooperation with China, no?” Said Xiao Long, a scientist at GeF Geosciences University in Wuhan, China, who has advised the Chinese space program. “He certainly doesn’t expect China to grow fast. They have already put their cards on the table. It is not something that is done peacefully. ”
The Greater Houston Partnership, an economic development organization, on Tuesday addressed the possibility of easing restrictions on NASA-China cooperation in a conversation with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstein.
“It’s above my salary extra,” Mr Bridensta said. “But of course, I believe NASA is a tool of diplomacy. I believe that wealth is a tool that can be used, for example, as a pot sweetener for trade deals. I think it can be used for all kinds of purposes for international diplomacy. “
