![]() ![]() One of the differences between that era of lunar rivalry and this one, though, is that China seems to be living up to Kennedy’s ideal. Kennedy told Congress that America’s eagerness to go into space was “not governed by the efforts of others” he was being less than candid the Soviet Union’s efforts were fundamental to the programme’s rationale. When, at the beginning of that great drama, President John F. It was America which, through a remarkable and extremely costly effort, successfully built that capability in the form of the Saturn V. Both sides needed a fundamentally new capability. The fact that getting to the Moon requires a very large launcher meant that the more limited technology which had allowed the Soviet Union to take the lead in Earth orbit no longer counted for much. ![]() Part of the genius of Apollo was to redefine the race as being one to the Moon. If the space race was to get into orbit, and thereby demonstrate both your remarkable technological prowess and your ability to drop a nuclear weapon onto any point on the Earth, the Soviet Union had already won. The Soviet Union had launched the first satellite into space in 1957 and the first human in 1961. In the 1960s America started off on the back foot. Does the American system work better than the alternative when faced with the challenges of the future? But the question in the minds of the spectators is strikingly similar. Today it is the reigning champion, seeking merely to maintain its pre-eminence. In the 1960s America was in a race, the outcome of which could not be known. Even here, though, there are crucial differences. Artemis, like Apollo, is shaped by the geopolitics of great-power rivalry-then between America and the Soviet Union, now between America and China. And rather than providing just a few brief visits, Artemis is meant to lead to the creation of permanent outposts. Whereas Apollo had to be a uniquely American achievement, Artemis will encourage the participation of allies. One of the goals of the Artemis programme, as NASA’s back-to-the-Moon programme is known, is to highlight the ways in which America has changed in the intervening decades. And while Sir Richard has no realistic human-spaceflight ambitions beyond tourist flights to the top of the atmosphere, Mr Bezos wants Blue Origin to play a big role in that next great adventure.Ī place for the private initiative of Mr Bezos and those like him is one of the ways in which the plans and context for America’s return to the Moon differ from those that saw it first go there-and then stop going there-half a century ago. There is every reason to think that, by the time Apollo 11’s 60th anniversary rolls around at the end of this decade, American astronauts will once again be leaving footprints on the barren lunar plains. But now it is also a date for looking forward. As such it was, for a long time, a date for retrospection. July 20th is the anniversary of the first landing of a crewed spacecraft on the Moon: that of the Eagle, Apollo 11’s lunar module, in 1969. If Mr Bezos has lost his precedence, he has kept his date. ![]()
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