The House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics held a hearing on Dec. 4 to discuss the issue of the U.S. getting to the Moon before China. Democratic Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) gave a devastating critique of how the Trump Administration has been undercutting U.S. science and technology capabilities, via its cuts to NASA and the attacks on U.S. universities.The tenor of the entire hearing was ostensibly the issue of beating China to the Moon; but when taking a poll of the witnesses, not one was optimistic about the possibilities of the United States being able to do that.
Most telling were the comments by former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who simply said that there was no way that U.S. could reassert its role in space unless it scrapped the entire Artemis program and developed a real program for placing a permanent base on the Moon. Griffin has authored papers indicating how that should be done. “The problem is not China’s rise,” Griffin said. “We can’t control what China will do. We can only control what we do, and in the present conditions, mediocrity would be an improvement.”
“We have squandered a 60-year head start in space,” he said. “And we can’t continue on a path that can’t work. Cancel Artemis and develop a program with all-deliberate speed.” The system architecture that he had submitted would be based on the capabilities that already lie at hand within NASA. He did say, however, that it would be folly if the U.S. left space to China. Griffin was not terribly concerned about beating China to the Moon. His prime concern was not having the United States get there at all.
