RAND SIMBERG ON the “Lunar Yellow Peril:”

I think that, when it comes to militarily useful lunar bases, the burden of proof is on those proposing them, and there’s nothing in Cal Thomas’s column to indicate that he’s given it any deep thought, except that anything the Chinese choose to do must be nefarious. I’ll take this threat seriously when I see it described, using real-world physics, and yes, show your work. Beyond that, I’d like an explanation of how a rival navigation system can “jam or make mischief” with our own, in a way that couldn’t be done much more cost effectively.

That is not, of course, to say that it isn’t in general worthwhile to have a lunar base. Bob Bigelow has been issuing warnings for almost a year that the Chinese want to claim the entire place, for reasons of national prestige. This would be in violation of the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits claims of national sovereignty, though they could of course withdraw, and bribe the General Assembly to go along. And to me, the question is, how would they physically defend such a claim? The moon isn’t a small place (its surface area is equivalent to a significant fraction of that of earth’s continents). If there is such a concern, one way to preempt it might be to pass the Space Settlement Prize Act, which would force a recognition of private, but not governmental, claims and prevent anyone from claiming an entire body.

But both the Chinese and NASA are far from being able to affordably get humans to the moon, and until they dramatically change their modi operandi (and we get a new Congress), they’re going to remain so. What both government space agencies should fear is Bigelow and SpaceX establishing a lunar base, and rendering them both irrelevant.

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