May 12, 2026 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast on so-called Moon race between the U.S. and China
John Batchelor asked me today to do bonus nine-minute segment on the eve of the Trump-Xi summit in China to discuss the “so-called Moon race” to get back to the Moon first. I have embedded that segment below. I start out by calling it “a fraud.”
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I don’t often quibble with Mr. Zimmerman, but in this case I feel that I must. In the podcast he says the following, beginning at about 2:40 into the program.
“But this whole thing about a race with china to the moon, it’s a fraud. Because — guess what? — we’ve already landed on the moon. We don’t have to prove our ability to do so.”
But this misses the most salient point. Yes, *many decades ago* we had the national will, the technology, and the “right stuff” to land Americans on the moon, but in subsequent years we gave up the ability to go back there, analogous to the Ming dynasty that ended its ocean voyages to the Western world in the mid-15th century.
Now, a half century on, the challenge is to essentially *rebuild* that capacity to go to the moon, and hopefully in a far more sustainable and cost effective fashion. But our ability to do this, complicated by all of the problems that are talked about in this forum, was never a given, and lacking SpaceX and its cohorts in this country’s private sector space sector, we would *still* lack the ability to return to the moon while the Chinese methodically plod ahead.
And, as Robert concludes near the end of the podcast, absent Administrator Isaacman’s attempts to restructure a badly conceived, kludged together hodgepodge of not quite meshing parts, there is no certainty, even then, that we will actually return to the moon by 2030.
So, yes, we beat China to the moon by almost six decades — and “won” the race — but the real question was whether or not we still had the will and the capacity to *return* there, and this is was what was so much in doubt.
PS — To continue with the analogy of the Ming dynasty, imagine those in the Chinese royal court observing the voyages of discovery and conquest of Johnny come lately nations like Spain, Portugal, and England and saying “Nah, nah; we did it all *first*, and we won.”
Milt: I don’t consider a government space program much of a real achievement, especially now. Artemis as presently structured remains a fraud to my eyes, and until it changes drastically it will remain so.
Listen again to the podcast. I don’t dismiss the need to go to the Moon, or establish colonies. I instead note that the real American space program is being done by private enterprise — the American people — led by SpaceX. That’s the effort I find exciting and real. And that’s the effort that will regain our ability to colonize the solar system.
Robert — I agree. My point, perhaps not made very well, was that for a number of decades — again think of the Ming dynasty — there was no desire (or funding) to go back to the moon. And, as you suggest, it is only the emergence of the private sector space industry that has made such a return practical and affordable at this point.
Absent such a private US space sector, however, the Chinese probably *would* have become the leaders in the exploration and utilization of the Solar System while the United States rested on its laurels. Funny how things work out.
PS: For anyone interested in the history of capitalism — love it or hate it — there is an interesting review essay by Jeremy Adelman in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that might be worth a look. Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Becket would seem to offer a wide ranging historical analysis of its many forms and faces and the sources of its persistent energy and dynamism. Along with the adoption of fire and the discovery of the wheel, capitalism — and free markets — must certainly rate as one of humanity’s most important (however problematic at times) innovations.
Milt: There are some fundamental differences between the Ming dynasty and America today.
1. The Ming dynasty was top-down authoritarian. The leaders dictated. When they said “Let’s explore!” they did wonderful things. When they said “Let’s not!” nothing happened.
2. America, even today, is a bottom-up culture, with freedom very fundamental to everything. The government saying “Let’s not!” guarantees nothing. Individuals and companies are still free to do what they want, if they can find a way to make money doing it. Musk and Beck have done so.
Robert,
You wrote: “America, even today, is a bottom-up culture, with freedom very fundamental to everything. The government saying “Let’s not!” guarantees nothing. Individuals and companies are still free to do what they want, if they can find a way to make money doing it. Musk and Beck have done so.”
Our space industry is bottom-up today, but four decades ago government said, “Let’s not!” and prevented individuals and companies from the freedom to do much in space. Government limited the access to only Space Shuttle launches and kept the price of access high.
These days, government encourages private efforts in space, and the access has increased greatly and the price of that access has dropped. It seems that the price will drop much farther in the next couple of years.
We have already seen a boom in private efforts to explore and to use space. We also have one private effort to colonize Mars and to use the Moon for manufacturing resources — without using taxpayer money. NASA has not even dreamed of doing either of these things. The privatization of space is when the real benefits come, as we have seen so far with private enterprise in space.
When we had let the government run space from the top down we didn’t get much for our tax money. Now that We the People are running space from the bottom up, we are getting so very much from investors’ money.
Ha! It is capitalism using other people’s money that brings us prosperity. We keep seeing that socialism (even in the government-run space program) using other people’s money brings waste and little progress.