🚀 The trillion-dollar space race: My chat (+transcript) with journalist Christian Davenport

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,

China’s spacefaring ambitions pose tough competition for America. With a focused, centralized program, Beijing seems likely to land taikonauts on the moon before another American flag is planted. Meanwhile, NASA faces budget cuts, leadership gaps, and technical setbacks. In his new book, journalist Christian Davenport chronicles the fierce rivalry between American firms, mainly SpaceX and Blue Origin. It’s a contest that, despite the challenges, promises to propel humanity to the moon, Mars, and maybe beyond.

Davenport is an author and a reporter for the Washington Post, where he covers NASA and the space industry. His new book, Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race, is out now.

In This Episode

* Check-in on NASA (1:28)

* Losing the Space Race (5:49)

* A fatal flaw (9:31)

* State of play (13:33)

* The long-term vision (18:37)

* The pace of progress (22:50)

* Friendly competition (24:53)

Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Check-in on NASA (1:28)

The Chinese tend to do what they say they’re going to do on the timeline that they say they’re going to do it. That said, they haven’t gone to the moon . . . It’s really hard.

Pethokoukis: As someone — and I’m speaking about myself — who wants to get America back to the moon as soon as possible, get cooking on getting humans to Mars for the first time, what should I make of what’s happening at NASA right now?

They don’t have a lander. I’m not sure the rocket itself is ready to go all the way, we’ll find out some more fairly soon with Artemis II. We have flux with leadership, maybe it’s going to not be an independent-like agency anymore, it’s going to join the Department of Transportation.

It all seems a little chaotic. I’m a little worried. Should I be?

Davenport: Yes, I think you should be. And I think a lot of the American public isn’t paying attention and they’re going to see the Artemis II mission, which you mentioned, and that’s that mission to send a crew of astronauts around the moon. It won’t land on the moon, but it’ll go around, and I think if that goes well, NASA’s going to take a victory leap. But as you correctly point out, that is a far cry from getting astronauts back on the lunar surface.

The lander isn’t ready. SpaceX, as acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy just said, is far behind, reversing himself from like a month earlier when he said no, they appear to be on track, but everybody knew that they were well behind because they’ve had 11 test flights, and they still haven’t made it to orbit with their Starship rocket.

The rocket itself that’s going to launch them into the vicinity of the moon, the SLS, launches about once every two years. It’s incredibly expensive, it’s not reusable, and there are problems within the agency itself. There are deep cuts to it. A lot of expertise is taking early retirements. It doesn’t have a full-time leader. It hasn’t had a full-time leader since Trump won the election. At the same time, they’re sort of beating the drum saying we’re going to beat the Chinese back to the lunar surface, but I think a lot of people are increasingly looking at that with some serious concern and doubt.

For what it’s worth, when I looked at the betting markets, it gave the Chinese a two-to-one edge. It said that it was about a 65 percent chance they were going to get there first. Does that sound about right to you?

I’m not much of a betting man, but I do think there’s a very good chance. The Chinese tend to do what they say they’re going to do on the timeline that they say they’re going to do it. That said, they haven’t gone to the moon, they haven’t done this. It’s really hard. They’re much more secretive, if they have setbacks and delays, we don’t necessarily know about them. But they’ve shown over the last 10, 20 years how capable they are. They have a space station in low earth orbit. They’ve operated a rover on Mars. They’ve gone to the far side of the moon twice, which nobody has done, and brought back a sample return. They’ve shown the ability to keep people alive in space for extended periods of times on the space station.

The moon seems within their capabilities and they’re saying they’re going to do it by 2030, and they don’t have the nettlesome problem of democracy where you’ve got one party come in and changing the budget, changing the direction for NASA, changing leadership. They’ve just set the moon — and, by the way, the south pole of the moon, which is where we want to go as well — as the destination and have been beating a path toward that for several years now.

Is there anyone for merging NASA into the Department of Transportation? Is there a hidden reservoir? Is that an idea people have been talking about now that’s suddenly emerged to the surface?

It’s not something that I particularly heard. The FAA is going to regulate the launches, and they coordinate with the airspace and make sure that the air traffic goes around it, but I think NASA has a particular expertise. Roc