It’s been sixty years since President John F. Kennedy declared “we choose to go to the moon.” In a landmark address at Rice University on Sept. 12, 1962, Kennedy affirmed America’s commitment to the space race with the Soviet Union. Seven years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon—one of the most significant moments in the human history.
Today we are in a new space race, this time with China. And our economic and national security both are at serious risk.
The experts are worried, according to a report from the State of the Space Industrial Base conference, held in June and sponsored by the U.S. Space Force, the Defense Innovation Unit and the Air Force Research Lab. For the first time since the conferences began in 2019, the 350 participants from industry and government were pessimistic about the US space sector. They predicted that China will overtake the US as the dominant space power by 2032.