For the estimated 200 million Americans who watched that momentous moment live in 2029 the timing was inconvenient. Unlike in 1969, it happened in the early hours of the morning. But they watched anyway.
So did much of the world, coming together like it had exactly 60 years earlier.
Once again there were two humans on the moon. The video quality was better but the pride and the joy felt in the world’s most powerful country were the same. Even if that country — for whom this event happened at a more civilised hour — was by then a different nation.
A Long March-2F rocket carrying three Chinese astronauts to the country’s permanent space station earlier this year
CHEN XIAO/VCG/GETTY IMAGES
The astronauts took one small step and unfurled a flag. Billions watched as the yellow stars of communist China appeared on the moon.
This was the scenario considered last week in the US Senate. And, to give a sense of the mood, one could do worse than quote the title of the meeting: “There’s a bad moon on the rise: Why Congress and Nasa must thwart China in the space race”.
This is, it should be said, somewhat more forceful than the titles the commerce, science and transportation committee ordinarily opts for, but then so was the language.
“We are in a 21st-century space race,” said Ted Cruz, a Republican senator. “Communist China is not playing by the same rules and they are aggressively investing resources to dominate space.”
Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon in July 1969
HERITAGE SPACE/HERITAGE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES
Allen Cutler, president of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, a lobby group, expanded on the significance. “The country that lands on the moon first will shape the rules of engagement in space for decades to come,” he said.
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Mike Gold, who is helping draw up the US moon plans, explained what this could mean: “If they get there first, we will see a global realignment that will impact our economy, our tax base, our ability to innovate and our national security.”
Other experts are sceptical about whether there is a need to be worried.
On paper, there should not be undue concern. Nasa has its own lunar exploration programme. The first astronauts are due to land in 2027, well before China’s target of about 2030.
However, the US has set and missed previous targets. In 1989, George H W Bush unveiled the Space Exploration Initiative with plans to return to the moon in the 2010s. In 2004 his son George W Bush set a new date of 2020. In 2017 President Trump signed Space Policy Directive-1, which aimed for 2024. Under Joe Biden, that became 2026.
Whereas China, untroubled by different presidents, changing priorities and difficult questions about budgets, has just kept plugging on.
Jim Bridenstine, a former Nasa administrator, told the hearing: “Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline.”
But some observers were less clear about whether this actually mattered. Sa’id Mosteshar, director of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law, said: “They talk a lot about these geopolitical and security risks. They mention all these economic benefits. They don’t say what they are.”
Chinese astronauts return to earth in inner Mongolia in April after a six-month stay in space
CNS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
China lands unmanned spacecraft on the dark side of the moon
This time, the US and China are both planning on building moon bases. The idea is that they would then use water at the poles for fuel, and perhaps start the rudiments of a space economy — supporting industry and power generation in space. But so far, despite plans for asteroid mining and helium harvesting, the only profitable aspects of space remain telecommunications in orbit.
Some experts have argued that one reason it might be good to get to the moon first is the claim that whoever wins the race can then set the rules. Space is already governed, though, by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, said Mosteshar, who is sceptical. “It’s not clear to me why standing on the poles before the US means they can then set the rules.”
Bleddyn Bowen, associate professor of astropolitics at Durham University, said that there could be still informal ways that they benefit. “The more they establish themselves, the more influence they’ll have in setting best practices. They will lead in lunar science.”
Nasa is already planning beyond the moon by preparing to put astronauts on Mars
DANIELLE VILLASANA
And in earthly matters?
“The people making these arguments had particular reasons to make these arguments. They have constituencies that will benefit from this, or have worked on these programmes for so long they want to see them fulfilled. So they try to scare Congress into funding all these things with the whole big scary China thing.
“It would be big for China, of course. It would be a huge legitimising thing for the Communist Party, who could say, ‘We’re amazing, we are overturning the century of humiliation.’ But the material benefits will be in lunar science. There’s no military or direct economic benefit and there won’t be for a very long time.”
In his view everyone should calm down a little and also remember a rather pertinent fact. “A lot of the narratives and rhetoric around this is about how, ‘China can’t be first’. That is correct. They can’t be. Because the Amercians were first, in 1969. It’s absolutely bonkers,” Bowen said.