Kenneth Chang

Mm-hmm.

And then there's scientific dreamers who want to do something like build a big radio telescope on the far side of the moon to listen to the universe.

Listen to the universe?

Yes.

There's signals from just after the Big Bang billions of years ago.

But it's hard to do that from Earth because we've basically made things very noisy with TV, cell phone calls, podcasts.

But on the far side of the moon, you have the entire thickness of the moon blocking all that noise.

Wow.

So you can hear the rest of the universe.

Pretty much.

These would be almost the echoes of the Big Bang.

And the other thing they want to do is use the moon as a testing ground for technologies that they ultimately want to put on Mars.

That would include nuclear power plants, habitats, life support systems, because many of the conditions on the moon are things you'll ultimately have to face on Mars as well.

Yes.

And then there's this romantic notion of humanity just spreading out into the solar system, that we are no longer just confined to one planet, but we can live elsewhere as well, someday on a moon colony.

But on top of all that, there's also the geopolitical competition with China.

And of course, we want to do all this before they do.

Yeah, because the people who are there first are the ones who make the rules of how space commerce is conducted, will have the prime locations on the moon, and control the resources, and so on.

So being first means being the one who's in charge.

True, but that's probably not what is going to be on their minds.