Space industry observers are already worried that President-elect Donald Trump could use his presidency for the benefit of “first buddy” Elon Musk, potentially diverting billions in government funding in the direction of Musk’s company SpaceX. But there’s another way a Trump/Musk mind meld could reshape the space business — and, crucially, affect its competition with China, the U.S.’ main outer-space rival. That road also runs through Musk — via the “Department of Government Efficiency” commission Trump named him to lead, which is dedicated to clearing out regulatory red tape. Pro-market space observers think that cutting back space regulations could play to America’s key strength vis-a-vis China — its quicker-moving private space business — and win the 21st century space race for the United States. “If you think about it in terms of exponential growth curves, the Trump administration is going to leverage the growth and innovation rate we see in the private sector, while China will continue to leverage the slower, but more predictable growth rate of government-funded space programs,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Todd Harrison told DFD. What’s the role of DOGE in all this? Even as America has largely outsourced spacecraft and rocket design to private industry, a formidable regulatory thicket faces what a July Deloitte report called “new space activities.” Government-driven space projects have a notoriously low appetite for risk, with strong incentives to make a launch work the first time or else risk years of congressional hearings before attempting another one; startups often find themselves willing to incur that risk, but hemmed in by regulation. The authors of the Deloitte report recommended streamlining the licensing process across the numerous agencies that regularly have authority over space launches, and bringing regulators’ definition of acceptable risk more in line with those of fast-moving space startups — all goals that are surely music to the ears of Musk, who has often feuded with the Federal Aviation Administration in its role overseeing rocket launches. If Musk wields DOGE to that end, the U.S. could end up with a riskier, but arguably faster-moving and more adaptive version of the fast-growing private space industry. While America’s private and public sectors squabble, however, China’s top-down, state-driven space program has continued to make slow and steady progress in recent years. Last month’s Shenzhou 19 manned launch was just the latest in a series of steps to the nation’s planned return to the moon by 2030, and some observers are now warning that China could beat America there given continued setbacks to NASA’s Artemis program. “Just a few years ago, such a scenario would have seemed unlikely,” Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at the U.K.’s Keele University, wrote in an essay for The Conversation published last month, concluding “there now appears to be a realistic possibility that China could beat the US in a race that America, arguably, has defined.” For those who are bullish on what Trump and Musk have in store for the U.S. space industry, even if China beats the U.S. back to the moon, that accomplishment could end up quickly surpassed. Harrison argued that while China’s deliberate pace might work in its favor now, the dynamism of a SpaceX unleashed by Musk’s deregulatory crusade (along with its competitors) could allow the U.S. to leapfrog China and become the first nation to reach Mars. “The farther you extend out the timeline, the more opportunity there is and the further ahead the U.S. is likely to pull,” he said, adding that both SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin would have a “big advantage” over China when it comes to landing humans on Mars, the latter company given Bezos’ bottomless pockets and the company’s focus, like SpaceX, on developing reusable launch vehicles. That, Harrison said, is a perfect microcosm of how Trump 2.0 can use America’s inherent market-oriented disposition to its strength, and help the country win the 21st century space race in the same way it did that of the 20th: by moving the goalpost to an achievement so big that cultural memory all but forgets our opponent’s “firsts.” “The Soviets achieved a lot of firsts in space, the first satellite in orbit, first human in orbit, first woman in orbit, first space walk,” he said. “We lost almost all the early competitions to the Soviets, but no one remembers that. What people remember is, we beat them to the moon. Then it was over. You could see the same dynamic play out with China if we set the goal to be Mars.”
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