Trump Declared a Space Race With China. The US Is Losing

If you want to put people back on the moon, don't gut the agency in charge of getting them there. The senator wanted a promise. For the last six years--or maybe the last decade or quarter century, depending on how you count it--the United States and China had been locked in a space race, a contest to see which nation could put its people on the moon . Senator Ted Cruz wanted President Donald Trump's nominee to run NASA, Jared Isaacman, to pledge that the US would not lose. Cruz brought a little surprise to Isaacman's confirmation hearing last April. It was a poster of the moon. On one side stood three astronauts and a giant Chinese flag. On the other were two more figures in space suits, with the tiniest Stars and Stripes planted in the lunar soil . Cruz apologized for the imbalance. "My team used ChatGPT," explained the senator, who chairs the committee that oversees NASA. Then Cruz, with a bit more seriousness, asked Isaacman, "Do we have your commitment that you will not allow the scenario on the right of this poster to happen? That China will not beat us to the moon?" Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who had paid for his own missions to space, replied, "Senator, I only see the left-hand portion of that poster."