COLONISING SPACE
Tim Marshall is the author of The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World
Is a second Space Race already happening?
Definitely. There are similarities to the previous one, but it’s different. In the 1960s and 1970s the Soviets and Americans were each trying to demonstrate that their technology was superior to the other as part of proving their political systems were superior. There’s an echo of that now with China and the US, but it’s much less ideological and less pronounced. The new race is driven by commercial prospects and military planning. No great power can allow another to be the only one trying to gain the potential advantages of mining the Moon, nor of militarily dominating space.