This article argues that a hypothetical decision by the People's Republic of China to assert territorial sovereignty over the area surrounding its planned manned Moon base is plausible. Enhanced international prestige in the near term and access to natural resources and strategic military positions in the long term may be sufficient temptations for China's leaders to challenge the United States to a twenty-first century space race. Strategic surprise could be successfully employed, given the opacity of Chinese decision-making; the conceptual blindness of external observers, including decision-makers, analysts, and academics; and China's repeatedly demonstrated capacity for executing military or diplomatic surprises of comparable magnitude. The ability of signatory states to withdraw from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty with one-year's notice means that international law only poses a temporary obstacle to such a decision. A manned Moon base would fulfill the condition of effective occupation necessary for territorial sovereignty under international law. An international relations constructivist approach discourages consideration of the advantages to states of territorial aggrandizement or the weakness of international law in restraining the behavior of states.
The sky is falling to...
(1) People are getting way too worked up about 'the Chinese are gonna claim the moon'. So, what is the big deal if they do? Answer: no big deal. (2) There is nothing of strategic value on the moon. At most it would gain China ... international prestige. ... (3) They ... likely to be eclipsed some time there after by India.Now I can hear some people shout: "There is water on the moon!" Yeah, so..? (4)The expense (5) it will take to establish a moon-base ... will, in the end, be so incredibly large that even China can not afford to do so for any extended period of time.Now I can hear some other people shout: (6) "China will militarize the moon ..." Oh please.... (7) delivering a weapon to any location on earth is best done NOT from the moon. ...And I don't want to hear the laser argument either. (8) Any laser firing on an Earthly target from the moon can easibly be targeted itself by Earth-bound lasers.(9) These constant warnings about the supposed lunar colonization plans of China are the direct result of fear. ...
There is nothing of strategic value on the moon.
Now I can hear some people shout: "There is water on the moon!" Yeah, so..?The expense it will take to establish a moon-base, set up a mining operation to extract water or whatever stuff from the lunar soil will, in the end, be so incredibly large that even China can not afford to do so for any extended period of time.
Now I can hear some other people shout: "China will militarize the moon and use it as a weapons platform against their enemies on earth!!" Oh please.... delivering a weapon to any location on earth is best done NOT from the moon. It would make one heck of an expensive weapon... think of it: first have the weapon transported to the moon, than have it fly all the way back to a certain target on earth? So much for a surprise attack.
What's so implausible about claiming territory on the Moon? NASA has already done it: NASA has declared no-go zones around some of its Apollo landing sites, and placed regulations on movement within the rest of them.
Quote from: woods170 on 03/10/2012 08:46 pmThere is nothing of strategic value on the moon. People said the same thing about Alaska when US went about buying that place. Guess what? They were proved wrong. In addition to vast volatile deposits, there are also likely vast electrostatic placer deposits of valuable metals that people are only dimly aware of at the present time.QuoteNow I can hear some people shout: "There is water on the moon!" Yeah, so..?The expense it will take to establish a moon-base, set up a mining operation to extract water or whatever stuff from the lunar soil will, in the end, be so incredibly large that even China can not afford to do so for any extended period of time.How do you know this to be true? Did you read the Spudis and Lavoie paper? They describe a base capable of producing useful amounts of rocket propellant that could be constructed for about $86 billion USD, no heavy lift required. QuoteNow I can hear some other people shout: "China will militarize the moon and use it as a weapons platform against their enemies on earth!!" Oh please.... delivering a weapon to any location on earth is best done NOT from the moon. It would make one heck of an expensive weapon... think of it: first have the weapon transported to the moon, than have it fly all the way back to a certain target on earth? So much for a surprise attack.The Moon wouldn't be used as a missile platform: it would be used as a manufacturing platform. Think about it this way: the first step will be to produce rocket fuel. Then they will refine some metals. Then it's a small step building some kind of factory on the Moon. Now, the holy grail of space weaponry would be a full spectrum missile defense system that would provide complete control of the upper atmosphere and Earth-orbit up to GEO and possibly beyond. The US looked very hard at this concept back in the day. The consensus was that a large constellation of 100,000 satellites (Brilliant Pebbles) could actually deliver a such a full-spectrum missile defense system. The problem was launch costs: they figured it would cost many trillions of USD to deploy such a system. That's why SDIO was heavily involved in researching ways to radically bring down the cost of launching to LEO, e.g., Delta Clipper and other systems.But what if a space power had a satellite manufacturing facility on the Moon? Combined with Lunar propellant and reusable Lunar landers, the launch costs for such a system would be practically for free. After all, isn't that the same argument used for space based power systems (SBSP)? SBSP is a neat idea, but all proposals get eaten up by launch costs: one proposed solution is to get the materials from the Moon: by parity of reasoning, a massive Brilliant Pebbles system would also benefit greatly if its parts could be manufactured on the Moon.The US would be presented with a big, fat strategic surprise. It would be forced to respond in kind, but with having to launch all its assets from Earth rather than the Moon, it will be at a major cost disadvantage. Combine this with the fact that at the time this all goes down, China will have a larger GDP than the US. The US simply wouldn't be able to compete: it will be in the same predicament that the USSR found itself in when Ronald Reagan was president. They'll be able to spend us into the ground.
Control of assets in space, if it turned into a contest, would ultimately come down to which contestant could orbit the most mass in a given time frame.
The US looked very hard at (Brilliant Pebbles) back in the day. ...such a full-spectrum missile defense system. The problem was launch costs: they figured it would cost many trillions of USD to deploy such a system. ...The US would be presented with a big, fat strategic surprise. ...
Lets see China build a rocket in the "moonshot" class before getting worried about losing all that precious crater ice.I'm trying to compare China to NASA in the early 60s and I just don't see it.Their capability to even do an Apollo type mission any time soon is greatly overestimated.
Their capability to even do an Apollo type mission any time soon is greatly overestimated.