The Real Reason We're Going Back to the Moon

Most people, when they hear "Artemis," think of science, exploration, maybe some national prestige. And yes, all of that is there. But none of those reasons justify spending $93 billion of U.S. taxpayer money. There has to be something more.

And there is.

The Change Nobody Talks About

Between 1972 and today, 50 years passed without anyone returning to the Moon. The obvious question is: why now? The answer lies in what changed in that time, not on the Moon, but down here.

In 1972, space was empty. There was nothing up there that mattered economically. Today there are more than 10,000 active satellites orbiting Earth controlling GPS, military communications, the internet, missile guidance, and enemy territory surveillance. The entire global economy depends on that infrastructure. If someone takes down your satellites, everything stops. No groceries at the supermarket, no bank transactions, no military coordination. Nothing.

Space stopped being "the place where we went to plant a flag" and became critical infrastructure for the real world. That is the fundamental shift.

The Moon Is Not the Destination. It's the Port.

And here is the connection that almost nobody makes explicit: the Moon is not Artemis's final goal. It's an operations base.

Think of it this way. In the age of great empires, you didn't win by controlling the entire ocean, you won by controlling the strategic ports. Whoever had the ports controlled trade, routes, and information. England understood this better than anyone. With a dominant fleet and control of the seas, it built the greatest empire in history, not by having more land, but by controlling how everything else flowed.

The Moon is exactly that, but for space. From there you can supply deeper missions into the solar system, lunar water can be converted into rocket fuel by separating hydrogen and oxygen. You can monitor and protect satellites from an elevated position. You can reach the solar system's resources first, from asteroids with precious metal cores to zones rich in helium-3, the potential fuel for nuclear fusion in the future.

The Moon is the most important port in near space. And like any strategic port throughout history, it's worth far more than the resources inside it.

So, Why Now?

Because China has a very serious lunar program and it's moving fast. Its declared goal is to establish a permanent lunar base before 2035, with a first robotic phase built through five super heavy-lift rocket launches between 2030 and 2035. And here's what's truly unsettling: there is no clear law regulating who gets to keep what in space.

The only relevant treaty dates back to 1967 — vague, outdated, and written for a world where space barely existed as a strategic concept. The 1979 Moon Agreement wasn't even signed by China, Russia, or the United States. It's basically the Wild West. Whoever gets there first sets the rules, claims the richest resource zones, and shapes how space usage is legislated for the coming decades.

This is not speculation. In 2019, NATO added space as a military domain alongside land, sea, and air. That same year, the United States created the Space Force as its sixth branch of the armed forces. In January 2007, China successfully tested a missile that destroyed one of its own weather satellites, creating the largest debris field in space history with more than 3,000 trackable fragments. Russia did the same in November 2021. The race has already started, nobody is just calling it that yet.

The Lesson History Gives Us

This is not new. Throughout history, the great shifts in world power have always followed the same pattern: someone discovers a new space, there's no clear law regulating it, the first to arrive keeps the best part and also decides how the rest is divided.

The Crusades were partly a war for control of trade routes to the East. Columbus's voyage was Spain's response to Portugal's monopoly on the African route to the Indies. The British Empire didn't dominate the world by having more soldiers, but by controlling the seas — and with them, trade, communications, and global information flow for nearly a century.

Today the seas are divided. Land borders are fixed. The new space left to conquer is literal: space.

The Idea I'm Left With

Artemis is not a scientific project with some exploration on top. It's a long-term geopolitical move. The same logic England used to build its hegemony by controlling the seas is being played out today in space. And the Moon is the first strategic port that needs to be secured.

Resources matter, yes. Prestige too. But what's really at stake is who sets the rules of the space game for the next generations. Whoever arrives first, stays, and builds permanent presence will have an advantage that goes far beyond science or exploration.

Whoever controls near space dominates the Earth. Whoever dominates the Earth determines the fate of humanity. That's not my words, that's what astropolitics experts have been warning about for years.

The race has already begun. Only this time, the flag planted won't be a symbol. It will be the beginning of something much bigger.

Do you have an opinion on the current space race? Do you think we're underestimating what's at stake?

References

• NASA Inspector General, as cited by Bloomberg. Estimated total cost of the Artemis program: ~$93 billion through 2025. Source: BusinessToday

• According to ABI Research (2024), there are more than 14,000 satellites in orbit, with over 10,400 actively functioning. Source: ABI Research

• China plans to complete the first phase of its International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) near the lunar south pole by 2035, via five super heavy-lift rocket launches between 2030 and 2035. Source: Space.com

• On January 11, 2007, China destroyed its own Fengyun-1C weather satellite with a ballistic missile, generating more than 3,000 trackable fragments and an estimated 35,000+ pieces of debris. Source: Wikipedia - 2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test

• On November 15, 2021, Russia destroyed its own inoperative Cosmos-1408 satellite with an anti-satellite missile, generating more than 1,500 trackable fragments. Source: West Point Lieber Institute