Final frontier: The race to control space

0:01Thomas Moore:Sky News, the full story first.

0:08Thomas Moore:Coming up, it's been 25 years since astronauts first arrived in the International Space Station. Proof that humanity can cooperate, at least when the gravity's switched off. So what has it achieved and who owns space now? How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.

0:57There is this kind of new element of a space race. I think we can also do it in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration. That's the whole spirit of exploration is, you know, yes, OK, we might be coming from different positions, but we're also one species and we're also there to cooperate and collaborate.

1:15Thomas Moore:If anyone knows a thing or two about space, it's Major Tim Peake, the first British astronaut at the European Space Agency, and the sixth person born in the UK to reach the giddy heights of the International Space Station. 25 years since the first astronauts moved in, the ISS was a symbol of what humanity could achieve together. The United States and Russia, former enemies, sharing a tin can, a toilet and the bill. The Cold War was over, cooperation was in and low Earth orbit briefly felt like the one place we might actually behave ourselves. Fast forward a quarter of a century and space looks less like a peace project and more like a business park.

1:55Thomas Moore:The ISS is approaching retirement just as a new space race takes off, not between superpowers, but between billionaires. Elon Musk wants to make us a multi-planetary species. Jeff Bezos wants to move heavy industry off Earth. Both insist they're saving humanity. Both happen to own the rockets. So, as the ISS prepares for its final descent after a quarter of a century of service, we're asking, what did this floating experiment in cooperation really achieve? And in the new era of private spaceflight, who actually owns the skies? Back on the podcast, our science correspondent, Thomas Moore. A quarter of a century of the ISS.

2:36Thomas Moore:This is a big old achievement, not just for one nation, but for the world. Yeah, it's huge. I mean, it has been the orbiting laboratory for 25 years. November 1998, they started building it. The Russians sent up the first module, the Americans sent up theirs soon after. And then bits have been added on over the years. And the Europeans joined the party in 2008. And since the year 2000, it has been continually inhabited by astronauts. Teams have been going up there every six months or so on rotation from Russia, States, Canada, Japan, and of course, Europe too. and our very own Tim Peake from the UK.

3:13Thomas Moore:It's just the international quality to the International Space Station that really sticks with me. 25 years of cooperation and, you know, if you look out the window down at the planet from the ISS today, the world doesn't look like a very cooperative place. An engineering feat, for sure, to lift so much up into space and then astronauts leaving what was then the space shuttle to actually bolt this thing together. Sometimes the robotic arm, but there was no way around it. they had to go out into deep space. With a drill? Yeah, with a drill, with a toolbox. A drill and a spanner on the outside of the ISA.

3:47Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But you're right. I think there has been this bink shift. So whatever geopolitical tensions have been on the ground between Western nations and Russia primarily, we have overcome those in space. And there has been generally no problem. There's been a little bit more tension more recently when a few holes were found in the the Russian module and some accusations that perhaps Western astronauts may have sabotaged it, that came to nothing. So what was the space station for then and now? Always intended to be a laboratory where they would be able to do experiments on stuff.

4:22So new materials that they needed to study in microgravity. It's not quite zero gravity, still they are falling slowly. So they do have that small bit of gravity, but it's much less than down here on the planet's surface of course and that allows them to study things in different ways so alloy metals for example mix in a slightly different way so they can construct new materials they can look at new pharmaceuticals crystals grow in a different way but of course the astronauts themselves have become lab rats so they've learned an awful lot an awful lot about how the human body survives in space changes that go on and there are really significant changes that that we have come to understand Because, you know, when you go to the space station, you're not there for a long weekend.

5:08Thomas Moore:You're there for an extended period of time. Yeah. Tim Peake put it like this, British astronaut. You age 20 years in a matter of months. That's the bone loss, the muscle loss, what it does to you, your DNA and all this kind of stuff. A lot of that is reversible once you come back down on the ground. Not all of it. And this is an ongoing challenge for people who are studying these astronauts. But if you're losing such a significant amount of your muscle mass, your muscle strength, That means if we are going on to another planet, which is the next stage of human exploration, are they going to be fit enough to bounce around on those spacesuits?

5:43If they have been traveling, for example, to Mars, it would take six to nine months. Now, that's why this has been such a really valuable learning experience on the ISS, because they've learned how to mitigate some of these effects. So the astronauts will exercise for two hours a day. that's the effort they have to put in to try and stop the the loss of muscle to keep their bones as strong as they can and so on so this is a really really important part of living in space

6:13Thomas Moore:it almost sounds like we are metaphorically figuratively speaking using the iss as a springboard for future space exploration yeah i don't think that was the original intention no i think it genuinely was that it was a laboratory for understanding how things behaved in space, including the human body. But now that we have become more ambitious, partly because space launches have become much cheaper, exploration has become much more feasible, but we have learnt all these things that will help us to leap onto the next stage. What is life like on the ISS from those that you've spoken to? I think all of us remember Commander Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut, strumming his guitar in the cupola, playing, what was it?

6:55Thomas Moore:It was David Bowie, wasn't he? It was, yeah. They aren't having fun most of the time. They obviously have some time off to play the guitar or do whatever they want to do. A lot of them spend, understandably, a lot of time out the huge window just looking down on planet Earth. And it has a transformational effect on their minds. But they are doing an awful lot of work. The experiments, Tim Peake, for example, did more than 250 different experiments in his 186 days. They have a whole day set aside for maintenance and hoovering. Why would that be important? Got to keep it tidy. There is a lot of detritus that can get kicked up.

7:28The dust floats around and they need to try and keep down that dust.

7:31Thomas Moore:Plus you've got several people living in a tin can, which I imagine brings with it its own problem. There is a unique smell, for sure. In fact, there are unique bacteria on the International Space Station. Because it has been an environment which has been isolated from Earth for so long, bacteria that get trapped up there continue to evolve. They have evolved in a different way to those on Earth, which is really interesting. and it just tells you a little bit about the conditions on the ISS. They don't have a shower on there. They use wipes and that kind of stuff. They clearly have a toilet. Everything is recycled.

8:02The liquid is drunk again, which appalls some people, but that's what you have to do because it's so expensive to take fresh supplies up there. So they have to look at this stuff really carefully, preserve everything that they can, and then the rest goes out the hatch into deep space.

8:17Thomas Moore:I have to admit, I was rather more worried about the prospect of mutated space bacteria coming here and taking over the planet, But which could, I suppose, happen in the not-too-distant future because the ISS is coming down. Yes, and in 2030 it's due to be de-orbited and they will basically send up a rocket, will act as a tug, and that will nudge it into the atmosphere where it will break up. Now, they were aiming to do that in a very controlled way. They anticipate that it will come down at what they call Point Nemo. That's in the South Pacific Ocean, the furthest from land possible, and that's where most satellites do come down.

8:53So that's where it's almost certainly going to be its graveyard. What replaces it? There'll be private labs. So this is very much the direction of travel, not just for NASA but other agencies too, is that private companies are rapidly acquiring the skills and the technology they need to do it much cheaper. And this has been what NASA has been trying to do. We've already seen private companies landing on the moon. Once that was only possible for space agencies, national space agencies, but individual companies are doing it too now successfully. And that's been a big shift and that will continue.

9:26So at least four different private companies are looking to launch labs into orbit in the very, very near future, some possibly next year. They will be private astronauts on contract for companies, but also for space agencies.

9:41Thomas Moore:Is that entirely positive, do you think? Taking away from the kind of the rather more democratic ISS, I say democratic with the Russians on board, But putting it into private hands feels to me slightly dangerous. Well, I think we've seen that trend now on planet Earth with a lot more power going to big tech companies and therefore in the hands of individuals. We heard from the new head of the UK security service warning about the impact that technology companies, a very small number of them, were now having. Well, let's name some of the names, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. I mean, they remain absolutely key players in this business.

10:21Elon Musk is out in front by a long, long way. I mean, if you look at the number of space launches, SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, looks like it will have 170 space launches, rocket launches this year. That's almost one every two days, which is incredible. There have been 266 launch attempts this year from planet Earth. and if he's had 170 of those, you can see how he has quickly dominated access to space. And there's a very clear reason why. He does it cheaper than anywhere else. He set his engineers the goal of not only getting up to space but then bringing back down the booster, the most expensive part of a rocket, and reusing it.

11:00And so he has brought down the launch costs to about, what,$2 ,500 per kilogram. Just a few years ago, it was three times that. And, you know, it's coming down. If you're prepared to do what they call a ride share, that's effectively taking the bus to space rather than a taxi. You're going up with a lot of other satellites. You can only get off in certain orbits like a bus, but you can actually get up there for about$1 ,000 a kilogram. It's dirt cheap. And that's opened up huge possibilities, not just for Elon Musk with his Starlink satellites. He's got about 9 ,000 broadband satellites up there already.

11:34He's hoping to have another 30, maybe even 40 ,000 in the coming years. And that will bring broadband to parts of the planet that have got no access to at the moment. So transformational people on the ground. And it's allowing us to do all kinds of stuff. But there's a lot of power in the hands of one man. So I think we should celebrate the fact that Jeff Bezos managed to get his rocket, the new Glenn, up in the air and then back down on the ground very recently. It was a test flight. First time that he's done it. So there could be some competition. It would mean there would be two cheap routes to space.

12:09and I think competition is always a good thing.

12:11Thomas Moore:Just talk a little about the ideology of both of them because I think they come at space rather differently. You listen to Elon Musk and yes, there is all the corporate aspect of it that you've just been discussing but it seems to me he's rather keener on seeding humanity on Mars whereas you look at Jeff Bezos, the Amazon background and he's talking about taking industry up into space. Yes, and I think you're right. You're absolutely right and both are possible. I think the designs of the rocket are slightly different And in theory, Jeff Bezos' rocket, the New Glenn, is much broader and could take up bigger payloads.

12:43So if you're looking at things like solar farms in space, well, that could certainly go up in Jeff Bezos' rocket. Mining asteroids. Yeah, potentially so. Everything is possible. But you're right, Elon Musk has very firm ambitions to get to Mars as possibly sending uncrewed rockets next year. and he's talked about a self-sustaining city of a million people on the red planet by mid-century. Really ambitious stuff.

13:10Thomas Moore:But would you describe what we are in right now then as a space race and the way in which it was the United States and the old Soviet Union back in the day? Because, of course, you do have the corporate actors and all of this, but the United States through NASA is still pretty powerful. China, India also, they have designs on space and in particular the moon. The nature of the space race has changed. So first of all, you've got private companies involved now, so they're in this race as well. But if you look at the flag carriers, primarily the United States and China, I think those are the two big players looking to go back to the moon.

13:44Both want to do it by 2030. NASA says they'll do it within this Trump administration, so that's possibly sooner. They are flying next year, astronauts around the moon, looking to land in 2027. but that hinges on SpaceX being ready with its Starship. And at the moment, that development has been a long way behind, which is why NASA's chief has thrown open the competition and said, well, we might actually let Bezos's company in to do the final trip down onto the lunar surface. That is up in the air. So some people doubt whether NASA will land in 2027. It'll get very tight with the Chinese to get down on the surface.

14:22There is that kind of geopolitical, we planted our flag here first, and they're going for the South Pole. And there's a very good reason here. Back in the Apollo days, they landed on the nice flat plains, mid-moon, the bit that we see. They're now going for the South Pole because they're looking for frozen water, ice. Down there in those very deep craters, which get no sunlight, the temperature has been well below zero for centuries, millions of years. And so there is probably an awful lot of water ice down there. Now, with ice, you can obviously melt it for water. You can raise it to higher temperatures and it turns to a gas, H2O.

15:03That means you have oxygen to breathe and you also have the elements of rocket fuel. So you could, in theory, use the moon as a staging post to going on to Mars and the rest of the solar system. That's why people are so keen on getting back there.

15:16Thomas Moore:It is incredible, notwithstanding the obvious geopolitical significance of being a nation, to stick your flag in the moon. We were talking before we started recording about the Apollo missions and those moon landings. It was a hugely significant moment for the world, I thought. And we are lacking those in the 21st century. There aren't big events that we as a global community can all cast our eyes on, apart from sport maybe, other than space exploration. And I just wonder, in this push to going back to the moon, whether there is something really positive, just in and of itself of having humanity standing on that thing that we can look at our windows at night and see.

15:56I think that's right. Yes, the moon is something every human on the planet has seen. And to know that there are people up there takes us away into the vast inky blackness of the night. And if you can get to the moon, could you get to the stars? And I think that's the unknown at the moment. We certainly don't have the technology to do that at the moment. But Musk does talk about the need for a second spot in the solar system where there is humanity, just in case stuff happens on Earth. And there's all kinds of things that could go wrong down here. So we need a plan B.

16:31Thomas Moore:People have always questioned the utility of space exploration and the amount of money that we spend on it. When you've got people talking like Jeff Bezos about mining asteroids and you've got Elon Musk talking about setting up another community of humanity on Mars because Earth might die at some stage. It doesn't sound horribly positive. It sounds incredibly corporate and possibly even slightly self-serving. Yes, and I suppose that's the inevitable consequence of companies becoming involved. So there isn't space agency which is funded by governments and governments are elected by the people. And so there is a kind of a public ownership of space exploration in the past.

17:07Perhaps we have less control in the future. And if a private company goes to the moon, do they have the mining rights? There are laws that apply to asteroids, to the moon, to all these things. They can't be owned. We all own them. There's that common ownership and that's the principle of space law. But these things can be eroded in the future. We wouldn't say that things now can't be undone in the future.

17:31Thomas Moore:Is there no capacity for cooperation when it comes to space? I mean, the United States and China, the two superpowers in the world at the moment, both have designs on what lies beyond. Can't those two work together? China is the only country that the United States will not cooperate with. So they are not part of the ISS. They have their own orbiting laboratory. So the Chinese are in competition with the Western nations. I spoke to Tim Peake about this and he said we have to be slightly careful about how strong we go at a space race. There has to be cooperation, collaboration, because it is hazardous exploring the moon.

18:06it would be foolish to use his word not to have common hatches that can latch on to each other between people going to the moon because you never know, something might go wrong. We may have to rescue Chinese astronauts and vice versa.

18:19Thomas Moore:Let's finish where we began, Thomas, with the ISS. Have you ever watched it going overhead? Because I started doing so during the Covid period. Dead at night, staring up at the scars, and this star, this really bright point in the sky, shoots over your head. You have seen it so many times. It is absolutely mesmerising. It is so bright, growing across the sky. One Christmas Eve, it went over. My kids were little, only it was so easy to fool them that this was Santa. It was absolutely fantastic. Thomas, always great to have you on the podcast. Thanks again. Pleasure. That's your lot for today. You can read Thomas' thoughts on 25 years of the ISS over on the website, skynews.com.

18:59Thomas Moore:The Daily's back again tomorrow.

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19:49Thomas Moore:It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful, and it's informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. From the front page to the zeitgeist, Here's the Scoop from NBC News. Listen daily wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.