Lift-off for China-US rivalry over space’s new frontiers
- Cold war-era treaties have not kept pace with developments such as space mining and new military technologies, analyst says
During the cold war, US eyes were riveted on the Soviet Union’s rockets and satellites. But in recent years, it has been China’s space programmes that have most worried US strategists.
China, whose space effort is run by the People’s Liberation Army, today launches more rockets into space than any other country – 39 last year, compared to 31 by the United States, 20 by Russia and eight by Europe.
On Thursday it landed a space rover on the dark side of the moon – a first by any country – and plans to build an orbiting space station in the coming decade. In the decade after that, it hopes to put a Chinese “taikonaut” on the lunar surface to make the first moonwalk since 1972.
China now spends more on its civil and military space programmes than do Russia and Japan. Although opaque, its 2017 budget was estimated at US$8.4 billion by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
That’s far less than the US$48 billion the United States spends on its military and civilian space programmes, says analyst Phil Smith of consulting firm Bryce Space and Technology. But it is more than double Russia’s civilian space budget, which has been slashed to US$3 billion.