Can America Be Great Again Without a Return to the Moon?

July 20 marked 56 years since Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first walked across that “magnificent desolation,” to borrow the words Aldrin radioed back to millions of television viewers on Earth.

The rest of the world could only watch in awe – or, in the Soviet Union’s case, envy.

With the lunar dust kicked up by those first explorers long since settled, Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind” is at risk of reverting to merely “one small step.”

That will be the case if America retreats from its admirable legacy of lunar exploration.

Put simply, NASA’s “rebooting” of the Moon is in trouble: the Artemis program aims to return American astronauts to the Moon, this time to establish a sustainable presence. But projected budget cuts and layoffs, including senior leadership – and an enormous amount of difficult-to-replace human capital – have translated to delays, scaled-back missions, and an overall “brain drain” that place the administration and its mission on shaky footing.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is on track to land its first set of astronauts on the Moon before 2030, with further plans to establish an innocuous sounding “International Lunar Research Station” in subsequent years.

To say there is a “space race” between the United States and China is, at this point, inaccurate. A race implies competitors. The United States has not gotten NASA to the starting line. This is the challenge and the opportunity facing the new “interim” NASA administrator Sean Duffy, because Artemis can be a modern Apollo for scientific and cultural renewal – a vehicle for American greatness.

The question is fair, given competing priorities at home and abroad, and all-too-finite resources. It might be better to ask what America risks missing out on if it does not get its lunar ambitions in order. The first answer is, again, resources.

NASA’s Apollo program, and a veritable tidal wave of robotic lunar orbiters and landers sent by other nations in the years since, have shown the Moon to be an unclaimed wealth of resources. No zoning laws to contend with; no EPA regulations. No private property rights and no sovereign territorial boundaries – yet.

What are these lunar resources? Lurking within sunlight-shy craters, deposits of water ice might be transformed into oxygen, drinkable water, and rocket fuel. Rare Earth minerals are also readily available on the Moon, including Helium-3, which alone would likely be worth the effort.

Helium-3 is critical for advanced technological and scientific applications. Highly desirable for clean, efficient fusion energy (though practical fusion reactors are still in development), it is also key for cryogenics, medical imaging, and homeland security, where it has wide application in neutron detectors.

Those who doubt the feasibility of lunar mining might consider the last time the United States gained access to a far, distant wilderness, when Secretary of State William Seward signed an 1867 treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million. “Seward’s Folly” was seen in a new light when gold was discovered there in 1898. Alaska’s oil reserves have further proved Seward’s wisdom since.

The second reason to go to the moon is military advantage – perhaps the greatest military advantage possible. The Apollo 11 moonwalkers and America may have “come in peace for all mankind” in 1969, but there is no guarantee the CCP will place itself under the same obligations in the 2030s.

The Moon is being viewed by military strategists as off-Earth “high ground,” a position from which any number of military systems may be leveraged to threaten targets on Earth, or satellites in its orbit.

The United States ought to be present on the Moon in force, if only to preclude its militarization by China through readily verifiable procedures. There is no other nation in the world that the world might trust with such a role.

Third, and finally, scientific breakthroughs. From cordless power tools to microchips to GPS, the original space race yielded incredible benefits for average consumers. The full impact of subsequent technological breakthroughs that we might unlock remains unknown, but we have reason to believe they will be consequential.

Yet beyond such prosaic needs, there is the opportunity to learn more about Earth itself. Earth’s Moon is a close-at-hand “witness plate.” It has a tale to tell. It is a record-keeping world rife with patterns of violent change that have transpired on the Moon and in our solar system over millennia past.

That scientific evidence has been erased on our geologically active Earth, but not on the Moon. As thinking beings, humans ought to know what happened on our planet to the degree we are able. It is something worthy of a great people and a great nation to undertake such an effort.

The words of the late Neil Armstrong before a Senate committee in 2010 are worth calling to mind:

“America is respected for the contributions it has made in learning to sail upon this new ocean,” he said, before giving this warning: “If the leadership we have acquired through our investment is allowed simply to fade away, other nations will surely step in where we have faltered.”

Apollo 11 moonwalkers, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin

Apollo 11 is firmly in the rearview mirror, but it is worth remembering it was a unified enterprise, a melding of government, industry, and academic prowess, drawing upon a reservoir of young engineers and skilled workers. It also succeeded thanks to a devoted president and a committed Congress.

To be and remain great, America – Congress – must revitalize NASA’s Artemis initiative. A resolute new Moon agenda drives economic, national security, and scientific progress. It would regain and retain America’s leadership in space and on Earth.

Leonard David is an award-winning space journalist who has been reporting on space activities for more than 55 years. He is author of Moon Rush: The New Space Race and Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet, both published by National Geographic.