The threat posed by a new space race is real. But so is the wonder of humankind’s reaching for the skies
“Everything we need, Earth provides. And that is somewhat of a miracle, and one that you can’t truly know until you’ve had the perspective of the other.” This is how the US astronaut Christina Koch summed up her experience of travelling to the far side of the moon on Monday. The feeling of a deepened appreciation for home recalls statements by an earlier generation of space travellers. The famous Earthrise photograph, taken on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, has been credited as one of the drivers behind the environmental movement. Such was the power of the first images of the “blue planet” captured from space.
The hope that such journeys can foster global cooperation and appreciation for life was also the theme of the prize-winning novel Orbital, which is set on a space station among a multinational crew. But if it was ever possible to overlook the darker side of space travel, it definitely isn’t today. In the 1960s, the American and Soviet programmes were projections of the two blocs’ military strength. In the 2020s, the tech billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are key players in a dramatically revived US industry, while a post-terrestrial geopolitical battle between the US and China takes shape. Nasa aims to put a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030.