U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.

Transcript

Laura Coates: What’s going on overseas and internationally as well with Dean Cheng, the USIP, senior adviser to its China program. Dean also has a new book out, it's called “China and the New Moon Race”, and guess what? We're going right there, Dean, good morning. How are you?

Dean Cheng: Good morning! Excellent, this fun Monday morning.

Laura Coates: Let's talk about the ambitions that China has, from the moon to Mars and everything in between, like space stations and satellites, there's quite the competition between the United States and China on this very issue.

Dean Cheng: Absolutely, the Chinese have made very clear that they intend to be what they term a “major space power”. And this includes not only lots of satellites in orbit, because satellites support economic as well as military aspects, but they are planning on landing a Chinese astronaut on the moon by 2030. And they also have indicated that they intend to try and do a sample retrieval mission from Mars, robotic for the moment, probably before the end of this decade as well.

Laura Coates: Now, what is the impact of that? I mean, what if China gets ahead of the United States on  establishing some sort of lunar domain? Is there a real consequence, or is this bragging rights?

Dean Cheng: It's both. So, in terms of further deep space exploration, there's a lot of talk about potentially using lunar resources, especially water, to basically help you break down water, which is H2O, into hydrogen, oxygen. You use that to make fuel to go further and deeper into the solar system, Mars, asteroids, etc. Why do you use the moon? Because the lunar gravity well is less than Earth, and water is heavy. So, if I can get the water from someplace other than Earth, I don't have to haul it out. Where do I get the water from? Craters at the lunar poles, because they are permanently dark, and that's the most likely place is to find ice. So, what the Chinese have already said, and they were the first to do this robotically, is we intend to go to the lunar poles, and we intend to set up facilities there. What is disturbing for us is that if the Chinese succeed at doing this, we're simply setting up a long-term human colony, essentially on the moon in the longer term, and we don't. This creates a really interesting question. What do you think the language of space travel will be? If you fly from Bangkok to Barcelona, two countries where English is not the native language, from takeoff to landing, the cockpit and air traffic control systems are entirely in English, and that's because the United States was the dominant power in air travel. When the rules are set up, what the Chinese potentially are signaling is that's fine when you travel in space, I hope you know how to speak Chinese.

Laura Coates: I mean, there might be some other life force, and then we'd all not be able to speak the language, presumably, as human beings, but I hear your point, and I say it in jest, but I do wonder the approach that China has to space. How does it differ greatly in terms of the planning compared to the United States' approach, aside from the issues of language, are there vast approach differences?

Dean Cheng: Well, if we look at the South China Sea, what we see is China which is signed on to the “UN Convention on the Law of the Sea”, basically radically reinterpreting how those rules work. It has built artificial islands, then turned around and said those artificial islands should have all the rights given to natural islands, including exclusive economic zones and territorial waters, etc. China has also basically said Vietnam and the Philippines don't get territorial waters at all because they're the Chinese claim goes within like three miles of their respective shores. If we look at how China behaves with regards to intellectual property, I think it's safe to say that there are grave global concerns about how China behaves with respect to whether or not they pay attention to intellectual property rights. So, there is real reason to question whether Chinese behavior in space is going to be similar in the sense of one set of rules for me and a different set of rules for thee.

Laura Coates: What about the cost to send payloads into space? Describe what that is for our audience and how this might be impacted as a consideration.

Dean Cheng: Well, in this regard, we've actually seen a revolution in cost to space. If you go back to the space shuttle days, it was something on the order of $10,000 a kilogram. So, every kilogram you send into space, which, by the way, includes your life support, if you've got humans, water, air, as well as your satellite payload and stuff like that, was costing $10,000. And thanks to Elon Musk and SpaceX and Falcon, we've seen a radical drop to lessen, you know, to around one to $2,000 a kilogram, one tenth the price. According to Mr. Musk, don't know, if starship works, which, there's every reason to think it will, then we could be seeing a price drop below $1,000 a kilogram. I mean, that is just a radical change in cost. This is comparable to, imagine how much it costs to fly pan and clipper in the 1930s compared to how much it costs to fly across the Atlantic or Pacific today on a Boeing 777. The Chinese aren't there because their state-owned enterprises and their space industrial complex hasn't quite gotten to that level yet, but that's what they're hoping to do. Once you are talking about literally one tenth the price, you start being able to do things like build multiple space stations or deploying literally 1000s of satellites, which has defense implications, like the old strategic defense initiative, as well as exploratory benefits.

Laura Coates: We have about a minute or so left, unfortunately, but I am curious about China courting African partners via this space diplomacy, particularly along the equator. What's behind that?

Dean Cheng: When you launch into space, the closer you are to the equator, the more the centrifugal force of Earth's rotation benefits you. So, you get up to almost a 10% bonus for free by launching closer to the equator. That's why we have launch sites in Florida and the Chinese have launch sites in Hainan. What the Chinese may be hoping to do they've certainly built a lot of strategic connections to Africa through their Belt and Road Initiative, they talk about a Space Silk Road. One of the possibilities in the long term is building launch sites closer to the equator, potentially in Africa. These would serve Chinese interests, presumably, and not necessarily anybody else's. It would also tie China to Africa, which churns out things like rare earths and other key minerals, and as we're watching in Djibouti and elsewhere, China has also established its first overt military base in Djibouti, but it had an even longer-term space related base down in Namibia.

Laura Coates: This is really fascinating to think about, where things stand with this particular space race. I'm so glad that you've enlightened us today on all of this. Dean Cheng, thanks for joining.

Dean Cheng: Thank you very much for having me.