Who’s Winning the Space Race?
Senator Ted Cruz wanted a promise. A solemn one. For the last six years, or perhaps the last decade, or the last quarter-century, depending on how it’s counted, the United States and China have been locked in a space race-a competition to see which nation could get its people to the Moon. Cruz wanted President Donald Trump’s nominee to run NASA, Jared Isaacman, to commit to ensuring the United States didn’t lose.
Cruz brought a small surprise to Isaacman’s confirmation hearing last April. It was a poster of the Moon. On one side were three astronauts and a giant Chinese flag. On the other were two figures in spacesuits, with the tiny Stars and Stripes planted in the lunar soil. Cruz apologized for the imbalance. “My team used ChatGPT,” explained the senator, who chairs the committee that oversees NASA.
Then Cruz, with a bit more seriousness, asked Isaacman: “Do you give us your commitment that you will not allow the scenario on the right of this poster to occur? That China will not beat us to the Moon?”
Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who had paid for his own missions to space, responded: “Senator, I only see the left side of that poster.”
And the race Against NASA?
It was a perfect answer. And isaacman may well have meant it. But by the time of his testimony, the Trump administration had begun a process that would end up pushing nearly 4,000 NASA employees into retirement. The White House then proposed a massive 24 percent cut to the agency’s budget. Then Trump withdrew Isaacman’s nomination and appointed a new, part-time acting chief-a guy who boasted on his official NASA bio of being half of “America’s first and longest-lasting married reality TV couple.” That guy then feuded with Elon Musk, who is building the module
