S8 Ep1109: The Sino-American Lunar Race for Permanent Presence. Rick Fisher and Doug Messier. China aims for a permanent lunar presence at the South Pole to potentially deny access to other powers. NASA is countering with a civilian coalition of private partners lik
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
The Sino-American Lunar Race for Permanent Presence. Rick Fisher and Doug Messier. China aims for a permanent lunar presence at the South Pole to potentially deny access to other powers. NASA is countering with a civilian coalition of private partners like SpaceX to develop sustainable infrastructure for future Mars missions. China'sarchitecture mimics Soviet systems, while NASA's Starship requires complex orbital refueling to reach the moon. (15)
Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | This is a high risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. I'm John Bachelor. Hotel Mars, Episode N. |
| 0:49.6 | Dr. David Livingston is here. |
| 0:51.4 | Dr. Space himself. |
| 0:53.5 | He runs the space show daily, morning, noon, and night. |
| 0:58.5 | However, David's come forward to volunteer into a mix with our two guests, Doug Messier of |
| 1:05.5 | Substack. His page is very carefully explicating a race to the moon by NASA. |
| 1:13.3 | Once upon a time NASA won that race in 1969. |
| 1:16.4 | Well, there's a new race on. |
| 1:18.2 | And we're very privileged to bring forward my colleague of many years, |
| 1:22.0 | Rick Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center, |
| 1:25.5 | who has a great deal of information about the Chinese space |
| 1:29.0 | program. Yes, there is the Russian space program, Roscosmos, but right now it's temporarily |
| 1:34.9 | not engaged, chiefly to do with resources. It's the first and the most successful of all |
| 1:41.1 | big space programs, but it's taken this decade off and hesitated to participate |
| 1:47.7 | in any fashion because it can't afford it. However, China can afford it and NASA can afford it, |
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