It’s difficult to avoid a sense of awe when seeing images from the Apollo missions that took humans to the Moon for the first time. Who hasn’t gazed up at the night sky and wondered what it would be like to actually go up there?
Watching Artemis II lift off on the morning of 2 April to take us back, all I felt was a sense of dread.
Awe for the Moon landings is easy to feel in hindsight, when the images of Neil Armstrong descending onto the dusty lunar surface are separated from us by decades. It is easy to forget that as Apollo 11 shot into space, napalm was raining down on Vietnam. Or that the chief engineer who designed its rocket was a former Nazi officer who oversaw mass missile production by slave labour in a concentration camp. Or that life in the United States was being transformed in the wake of massive social movements against war and for civil rights.
The launch of the first crewed mission back to the Moon in more than five decades seemed to come out of the blue, following a flurry of more pressing events. Artemis II launched as American and Israeli bombs rained down on Iran and Lebanon. A few days after the No Kings protests, which were the biggest demonstrations in American history. A few months after a mass rebellion in Minneapolis, culminating in a general strike against Gestapo-like goons carrying out mass deportations.
Beyond the striking similarities between the historical moments, the central driving force of Space Race Two is the same as that of Space Race One: great-power rivalry. Much is written by liberal pundits about how space exploration is an internationally unifying endeavour driven by simple human curiosity. Maybe Neil Armstrong meant it when he said “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”—but space exploration has never been pursued in the interests of all humanity.
It has always been about projecting state power. The US was spooked into starting the Space Race after the USSR launched the satellite Sputnik I into orbit in 1957. It proved that Russia was not only ahead in space technology but also in developing long-range ballistic missiles.
Within four months, an American satellite was also in orbit. Within three years, American surveillance satellites were capturing strategic imagery of the Earth’s surface. By 1961, then-President John F. Kennedy had stated openly the American goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him to Earth by the end of the decade.
The logic was simple, but it was not altruistic. There was no better proof that the US was capable of landing a missile on Moscow than landing the payload of a missile on the Moon. The technology required to go where no one had gone before was the same technology needed to build precise intercontinental ballistic missiles, and other useful tools for industry and imperialism.
The core motivation was the drive to expansion and domination intrinsic to capitalism. JFK stated plainly the beating heart of it all in his famous 1962 speech at Rice University: “This country was conquered by those who moved forward—and so will space”.
Space Race Two’s goals are somewhat different, but no less imperialist. There are now many powers with extremely long-range missiles and enemies they would like to target. This time, JFK’s old allusion to “conquering” space is even more the immediate aim. US President Trump himself made a similar reference to America’s colonisation in his second inauguration speech: “We will pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars”.
The crew of Artemis II will only circle around the Moon, not land on it. But the launch has fired the starter’s gun for a scramble that will play out over the next decades. NASA intends, over the course of several Artemis missions, to establish a permanent base near the Moon’s south pole.
By getting there first, the Americans intend to claim dominion over the potentially abundant lunar resources. The surface could be loaded with rare-earth metals, helium-3 (a rare isotope used as fuel for fusion reactors), and frozen water, which can be turned into rocket fuel, enabling the base to serve as a refuelling site for further missions to Mars.
The reason this is all happening now, and not any time in the last 50 years, is that the US has a new rival rising on the horizon: China. It is no coincidence that Artemis has been kicked into gear to beat China’s plans to achieve a crewed Moon landing by 2030.
If it really were all about human curiosity or attempting to unify mankind behind one ambitious, international goal, why did it take so long to go back? NASA did not forget how to build rockets. Indeed, an internal report for the president’s office, written at the height of the Apollo program, estimated that a Mars landing could have been possible in the 1980s had the space program maintained its funding level.
If the Artemis program proves anything, it’s that for capitalism, there truly is no final frontier. As long as there are continents to claim, whether on Earth or in space—the Moon has a land area similar to Africa’s—the system demands they be fought over.
Of course, expansion into space has not been totally on pause for half a century. Every day, new satellites are launched, forming networks for communication, surveillance, and, soon, likely also weaponry. Low Earth Orbit has already become a new domain for profiteering and warmaking; the Moon is the next.
The images of the Earth and Moon beamed back from Artemis II are breathtaking. Their tragedy is that they are an omen of a possible world-engulfing war to come.
