The 21st Century Lunar Gold Rush

The Moon has been kept busy recently, with successive visits from new friends. In January, she was paid a visit by'Chang'e 4' in what became the first landing on the "Dark Side of the Moon". More recently, Israel's 'Genesis' was sent into space by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Later in the year, India's 'Chandrayaan-2' will make its own Moon landing.

Such high frequency of lunar travel has led to talk in the media of a re-emerging "race to the Moon". On the one hand, more and more countries have achieved successful first landings. On the other, NASA has revealed that it will accomplish a manned lunar landing by 2028.

If we are really to regard this current wave of Moon landings as a second "race to the Moon", first we must note the differences between this one and that of the Cold War period. Most evident is the usurping of politics by business.

Propaganda cartoon on the Moon landing from the Cold War period

Playing by a new set of rules: the “Moon race” of the 21st century

Take Israel's recent 'Genesis' as an example. Effectively, it is the result of cooperation between two tech companies.

In 2007, Google introduced the 'Lunar XPRIZE', calling on private companies to research and develop unmanned spacecraft for lunar landing and offering 30 million USD in prize money. The first privately funded team to land a spacecraft on the Moon safely, have it travel along the Moon's surface for at least 500 meters, then transmit back to Earth data packets of high-definition video and photographs would be awarded the money.

The initial deadline set by Google was in 2015. However, by 2015, with so few applicants, the company kept extending the deadline, ultimately settling on 31 March, 2018. Google even added several consolation awards, claiming that any spacecraft that touched down on the surface of the Moon, even by crashing, or that soft landed and was able to transmit back images, even if unable to move along the surface, would be eligible for prize money.

Though unfortunately no single team had managed to earn any prize by last year's deadline, Google at least gained the good reputation of "encouraging the development of space technology". At the same time, the competition propelled some privately funded lunar landing research teams into the public’s attention. The Israeli nonprofit space organization SpaceIL that is behind the recent launch of 'Genesis' is one of the research teams that competed for the prize. 'Genesis' is also the first lunar probe to be financed through crowdfunding, with most of the total USD 100m investment financed through individual contributions, of which 40m came from the pockets of the SpaceIL president himself.

From another perspective, the emergence of commercial rockets represented by SpaceX has clearly defined the division of labor within space exploration, including that of lunar landing.

The ability of a research team to land a spacecraft successfully on the Moon has nothing to do with the rocket carrying capacity of the country represented by the research team.

The successful lunar landing of 'Genesis' proves two things: first, with more and more attention from tech companies being directed towards the space economy, a lunar landing is no longer dependent on the "pooling of national resources"; second, with the division of labor in space exploration becoming better defined, powerful players such as NASA are losing many of their accumulated advantages.

The development of technology throughout the world generally follows a similar pattern. Starting off as state or military development, it then gradually transitions to privately funded and commercial, from which point accessibility expands. For NASA, it means a need to accumulate new advantages.

The so-called second wave of competitive lunar landings is no different – like a new season on the sporting field, where gaps formed by players over the previous season are narrowed allowing them to set off again on a more even footing.

Short-sighted lunar vision: What is the value of a Moon landing?

Once more we face an age-old question: today, with no threat of a Cold War, what is the significance of the further development in space technology represented by lunar landings?

On this issue, opinion and debate abound, and there will always be some to raise questions like: why don't we use the money spent on lunar landings to build schools in the countryside? The answers to such questions follow a similar line of thought: Moon landings are training exercises for Mars landings, the latter likely to be the next abode of human beings; aerospace technology can promote the development of basic science including communications and navigation; the space race represents the second Age of Exploration – not being involved would be the equivalent of completely missing the boat, for instance, on shipbuilding technology.

（编辑：核心网）

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