Usa and China are competing for the Moon

Whose is the space? A question to which maybe many never think about. A problem that the first astronauts on the Moon didn’t even considered, but that is becoming ever more relevant. As much as that Usa and Cina started to figth right about its ownership, in the last days, by claiming the rigth to own, if not all of it, at least a piece of the Earth’s satellite.

Usa and Cina: whose is the Moon?

It isn’t a theorical fight, the Usa infact issued formal acts claiming that the space is usable by them and their citizens, by claiming even their rights to use the Moon and the asteroids without restrictions or limits.

Basically the America would like to play to the colonization like: the first one to arrive is the owner, which is something very familiar with the past of this economic power.

But the China answer to it by claiming, already for years, that instead it would like to avoid that there are monopolies about an extended and unexplored space as the Universe is.

In the 2018 Ye Peijian head of the chinese moon program, did an interesting analogy between the sea and the space. By claiming how as well as the sea, the space might be owned by no one.

Currently the Space Act of the 1967 exclude that the celestial bodies are owned by some country because they are “common heritage of humanity” , but it allows the study of them for science. It claims furthermore that “the extra-atmospheric space isn’t owned by any nation not by claiming the authority, by occupying it, or with any other way”.

The Space Act was signed, between the others, even by the United States of America.

Why does everyone want the Moon

Our satellite is such disputed because they hope to estract rare materials from the lunar rocks. But even because they are very interested in the research of hydrogen. oxygen and tritium (an isotope of the hydrogen). These elements might be really useful to realize the such dreamed base camp for the trips on Mars.

Right for this reason the chinese are afraid that the Usa will try to own the Moon. We must say infact that besides the already mentioned Space Act of the 1967, the United States didn’t signed any treaty any more about it and that first Obama and now Trump issued executive orders that allow the claim of the Earth’s satellite.

A hard period

We have to say that the debats between Usa and China, in the last years, are much more than the ownership of the Moon. Attacks, accusations, closure of the import and export, made these months very tense between United States and China.

Furthermore since when Trump is president the relationships got worse. The arrival of the Covid-19 then didn’t help, otherwise it increased the disagreement between the two countries.

The ownership of the Moon so is only another drop in the sea of problems between the United States of America and the Popular Chinese Republic.

Now maybe we are seeing a little bit of light between the two economic powers, right after the pandemic that took down the global economy.

Everyone needs a recovery, for this reason the Deputy Prime Minister Liu He claims that one must strengthen the macroeconomic cooperation. By the way the accusations of Trump about the fact that it was the China to spread the virus and the hard answer of Bejing become new chapters opened in the fight.

This post is also available in: Italiano