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A poll carried out in China by the toy company Lego in 2019 asked children aged eight to 12 what they dreamed of being when they grew up, more than half, 56 per cent, said: ‘An astronaut!’
But when the same question was put to youngsters in Britain and the US that same year, barely 10 per cent had any thought of going into space. Instead, the most popular ambition, shared by around a third, was to be… a YouTuber.
That’s a stark indicator of how far the West is in danger of falling behind in the Space Race. Conquering the galaxy has not seemed more imperative since the 1960s, when the contest between the USA and USSR to put the first man on the Moon dominated global headlines – a bitter proxy war, of course, over whether capitalism or communism was the greater economic system.
This time, it is not the US or Russia, but China that wants to become the world’s leading space nation. It aims to overtake America’s efforts to send missions to the Moon and perhaps even Mars, symbolising its rise as the global hegemon. Its effort perhaps gained a dramatic boost on Tuesday night when a test flight for Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket, Starship, suffered catastrophic fuel leaks that caused it to shower blazing debris over the Indian Ocean.
This was the third successive failure for SpaceX, the dominant player in American rocket technology – known for its failures rather than achievements.
The delicious euphemism ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ has entered the popular lexicon since it was used by SpaceX in 2023 to describe the explosion that destroyed an earlier Starship.
This time, a ‘payload’ door on the prototype spacecraft failed to open, meaning its cargo of dummy satellites could not be deployed. Then it began spinning out of control, until it blew up.
Musk, the eccentric genius driving SpaceX development, is a man in a hurry. His grandiose vision of establishing human colonies on another planet would be wildly ambitious if his goal was to do it by the end of this century. Yet he talks about ‘Occupying Mars’ within a few years, and sending his first Starship there within 12 months.

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft launches on its ninth test on Tuesday

President Donald Trump watch an earlier prototype of SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship lift off for a test flight with Elon Musk last year
His method is to pour tens of billions of dollars into development, launch rockets frequently, fail frequently and learn from every setback. To call this a high-risk strategy would be an understatement. In 2008, after a series of his Falcon1 rockets exploded, he was down to his last few million dollars and one explosion from bankruptcy.
Today, worth more than $300 billion (£223bn), he is the richest person in the world despite the collapse in share price of his electric car company Tesla, his disagreements with President Trump over his handling of federal cutbacks as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, and the stalled growth of his social media network X, for which he paid $44billion.
These days, Musk can afford more explosions. What he doesn’t have is time. Chinese president Xi Jinping has the Moon in his sights.
Unlike the maverick Musk, he has the resources of his vast nation to ensure he wins. Xi views the Moon as the ultimate prize. His rationale is simple: all over the world, human beings look up at the night sky and gaze in awe. Soon, when they do, it will be as if China is looking back, not America, which hasn’t sent a man there since the final Apollo mission in 1972.
There could be no more potent symbol to prove which is the planet’s dominant superpower.
China has trained the best scientists and pioneered radical technology. New cities such as Ningbo are dedicated to conquering space. Little information leaks out of its state-controlled program, but rumours say Beijing is aiming for 2028 – they brought forward their schedule by two years in response to America’s plans – with an all-female astronaut crew on a Long March 10 rocket.
America’s space industry, by contrast, has been mired for decades in controversy, politics and ego battles. The shuttle disasters, with the loss of all seven crew on Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, sapped the appetite to put humans in space.

A test launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, a prototype developed by Musk’s company

Musk, the eccentric genius driving SpaceX development, is a man in a hurry. His grandiose vision of establishing human colonies on another planet would be wildly ambitious if his goal was to do it by the end of this century
When the idea was revived, senators fought so stubbornly to bring the budget to one state or another the whole project stalled.
That changed when Trump came to power in January. With his ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk urging him on, he announced the US was back in the Space Race and would put astronauts on the Moon within his second presidential term – by 2028.
Such a timescale does not appear feasible. US resources are too fragmented: as well as SpaceX, Trump wants to involve Blue Origin, the aerospace company developed by Jeff Bezos. But Bezos believes in caution and steady progress. Through Blue Origin, he is designing communication satellites, the Kuiper project, to ensure Musk’s Starlink company does not exert a monopoly on the orbiting technology that beams internet and phone signals around the world.
That may be useful but doesn’t mean Blue Origin is the right partner for SpaceX to design a lunar lander. You might as well build a hybrid racing car from Lamborghini and Ford parts and expect it to win the F1 championship.
Musk’s goal is to put his Artemis III lander on the Moon within two years. It’s perilous: he’ll have to send astronauts up in a capsule and Starship will have to dock in lunar orbit. It will have to refuel outside Earth’s atmosphere. Even if that is achieved safely, the Orion crew must set off on the return trip in the capsule, make the perilous re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere and touch down safely.
Even Musk is not reckless enough to attempt this without successful tests, including at least two unmanned Moon missions. To do this within a decade would be remarkable. By 2027 is ludicrous.
After Russia lost the Space Race in 1969, President Leonid Brezhnev pretended Moscow’s intention had never been to put cosmonauts on the Moon. Instead, they poured their resources into building Salyut1, the first space station.
Similarly, Trump is hedging his bets by claiming America’s real goal is to put the stars and stripes on Mars. The logistics are even more improbable. But an uncrewed Starship is expected to be despatched to Mars next year. If successful it will prove American astronauts could make the trip.

Musk’s goal is to put his Artemis III lander on the Moon within two years
The challenges are mind-boggling: finding and training a crew to spend up to three years in cramped space-flight, developing systems to keep them alive, building an outpost on an uninhabited planet, and – of course – bringing them home. Until that is possible, a mission to Mars is sheer sci-fi.
But that doesn’t make it stupid. Pouring billions, even trillions of dollars into space tech is a colossal boost to the economy. No one spends those dollars on the Moon, after all – they go into American businesses and wage packets.
As President George H. W. Bush remarked in 1989, the money spent on going to the Moon was the best return on investment since Leonardo da Vinci bought a sketchpad. Leonardo would surely approve of the renaissance in the Space Race. When you next look up at the full Moon in the night sky, consider it’s more than just a distant rock – it is the ultimate symbol of man’s desire for conquest. Ask yourself who is more likely to triumph in this race: a country where children want to be astronauts, or influencers?
Dr David Whitehouse is a space scientist and author of Space 2069: After Apollo: Back To The Moon, To Mars, And Beyond, published by Icon Books.