Americans stand at the cusp of one of the most consequential competitions ever faced, and most Americans don’t even know it is happening. It is a competition that could undermine our long-term energy security, national security, even human liberty.
The average American may have clicked on some news article about Solar Power Satellites, beaming power in space, or have heard that the administration and NASA want to develop nuclear power for the Moon. But Americans may not see the direct link to U.S. interests or understand the consequences of success or failure.
At the center of all economic vitality and all military power is energy. Energy is a measure of our economic size, and a proxy for our military power. No economic activity takes place without energy. Energy is what allows us to flip bits, to make microprocessors, to grow crops, move and refrigerate them, to mine minerals — whether under the ground today, or in the near future, on the Moon or asteroids. Energy is what enables us to feed armies, to move vehicles, to fly aircraft, to launch and move spacecraft, to fire missiles, and to shoot projectiles or directed energy weapons.
The new “Space Race” is not your father or grandfather’s space race. It’s not about prestige or getting back to the Moon first. Rather, it is a scramble to control the vast resources of space.
The new “Space Race” is not your father or grandfather’s space race. It’s not about prestige or getting back to the Moon first — that is an irrelevant distraction. Rather, the new “Space Race” is a scramble to control the vast resources of space. The resources of the inner solar system are so vast — a billion times the energy and a million times the available mineral resources of planet Earth — that they will determine the structure of international power for centuries to come. A failure to win this strategic expansion risks relegating the U.S. to an economic backwater, and the potential to constrain human liberty in the broadest canvas of human activity.
The key to winning is developing an advanced in-space industrial base: Lunar and asteroid mining, in-space factories and manufacturing, regular and re-usable in-space mobility and logistics. The national ambition is not to create some anemic Lunar base camp or anemic flag-planting mission on Mars. It is the creation of a permanent industrial capability in space that can access, process, and move millions-to-billions of tons of material employing first megawatts and then gigawatts of power. A forge of freedom, an arsenal of democracy, a series of “coaling stations” that allow commerce in the vast ocean of space, and the material and energy resources to protect it.
Two forms of energy are central to securing space superiority and winning a second American century: nuclear energy and solar energy. Each have their niche, and they are mutually reinforcing.
At the center of our solar system is a giant, already functioning fusion reactor, streaming out powerful 24-hr solar energy just waiting to be tapped. The Sun provides excellent energy for most — but not all — of the inner solar system. High orbits are almost entirely bathed in sunlight; the ‘peaks of eternal light’ on the North and South Poles of the Moon receive almost constant sunlight. These are places to take advantage of the free and constant power provided by the Sun.
The resources of the inner solar system are so vast — a billion times the energy and a million times the available mineral resources of planet Earth — that they will determine the structure of international power for centuries to come.
But the Earth and Moon create shadows for spacecraft in lower orbits. Half of both the Earth and Moon are always shadowed in night — with the Lunar night lasting a brutal two weeks of bitter cold and darkness. At the North and South poles of the Moon are permanently shadowed craters which contain valuable frozen gasses that have never seen sunlight — resources critical to outward expansion. As we get farther from the Sun— to Mars and the Asteroid Belt — the Sun’s energy is weaker, and half of the Asteroid belt is beyond the frost line where solar energy is so weak, water stays as ice. These are places where we need space nuclear power.
As an always on, high-temperature power source, nuclear power is useful to kick-start industrial processes, and allow 24-hour operations, especially in shadowed regions on the Moon, on Mars to generate propellant where sunlight is weak, or beyond the frost-line of the Asteroid belt where still greater resources lie. It is useful to power cargo and crewed reusable spacecraft that transit between the Earth-Moon system and Mars and the Asteroid belt in reasonable times. Nuclear power is principally about access, mobility and speed. It’s about enabling first-mover advantage. And to be useful, nuclear power in space needs to be megawatts to tens of megawatts.
Solar power is about scale within the Earth-Moon system. As vast as is the resource of uranium, thorium (including reprocessing), the total fission resources of the Earth — and even the Solar system — are dwarfed by the energy of the Sun, which produces every second 2.2 billion times more energy than the Earth intercepts, and 20 trillion times more energy than our civilization consumes, and will continue to do that for hundreds of millions of years. As is being explored by Blue Origin and Lunar Resources, solar cells can be manufactured in space. A small fraction of Lunar or Asteroid resources could build an in-space energy web to supply all power for a fully developed Earth, or support the mega-scaling of AI data centers without the impact to our clean air and water. To matter to our national ambitions, Space-Based Solar Power must be measured in gigawatts and terawatts.
But how is America doing in this race? Since 2006 it has been our national grand strategy to “incorporate the inner solar system into our economic sphere.” The vast inner solar system resources of energy and materiel together push out the production possibility frontier to many times what is possible on Earth alone, and are the biggest source of long-term secular growth outside of — and making possible — gains in AI productivity. Our two most prominent space industrialists are all in. Elon Musk dreams of making life interplanetary, and using Lunar resources to build 1,000 terawatts a year of data centers. Jeff Bezos sees a “great inversion” where energy and manufacturing move to space, and where the solar system could support a trillion human beings.
The key to winning is developing an advanced in-space industrial base: Lunar and asteroid mining, in-space factories and manufacturing, regular and re-usable in-space mobility and logistics.
Multiple U.S. companies are ready to mine asteroids, to mine the Moon, to turn those resources into usable materials to build satellites of unprecedented size and utility, space stations, data centers — to build a new space logistics and transportation structure and to provide them with the propellant. But sadly, our national space program is not focused on such industrial goals and their vast power requirements. This misaligned priority puts America’s future energy security at stake. Our interests are not served to allow adversaries to corner the market on in-space energy and the in-space industries it enables. We will not be pleased to cede our bright future of using space resources, or powering AI data centers to adversaries. Our liberty will not be extended if our economy or the economies of our allies and would-be partners becomes dependent on adversarial energy supply.
America’s insufficient focus on the right things — the things that matter to our national economic and national security — are likely to generate a series of unpleasant shocks and surprises over the ensuing decades as adversary investments come to fruition and pull ahead.
The Trump administration’s Space Superiority Executive Order is a step in the right direction. On nuclear, the administration has taken laudable and believable first steps (such as a 100 kW reactor on the Moon by 2030.) But our ambitions are ten-fold smaller than our Chinese competitors who are developing megawatt-class reactors for the Moon and space transportation.
But the Administration has yet to take action — or even recognize — the race for Space Solar Power. On this topic, the U.S. is not racing. It doesn’t even have a program. It is letting China, which has the most advanced program, get farther and farther ahead. Although the U.S. invented the idea, decades of finger-pointing between NASA and the Department of Energy have resulted in a lack of progress. Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and the European Space Agency all have more active national programs, while Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, India, and Russia have indicated interest. Despite several exciting U.S. startups such as Overview Energy, Virtus Solis, SST, and Solaren, no U.S. government program exists to nurture them. The same is true for companies that hope to beam power in-space — companies such as Volta, Starcatcher, Aetherflux, Powerlight, Fibertek, and Mantis Space. These technologies both enable and create a market draw for Lunar and Asteroid mining, and the entire suite strongly interacts with our an in-space industrial base that can scale to provide a mobility and logistics advantage. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has dipped its toe in the water with its promising LunA-10 study. But to meet the national needs, the effort needs to transition to a full-fledged DARPA program office focused on Space Industrialization (call it DARPA/EXO).
What we really need is an executive order to pursue Space Energy Dominance that spells out our national industrial ambitions, articulates our national nuclear and solar ambitions, sets targets for power levels and economic activities, and assigns clear responsibilities to NASA, the Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, and Department of War.
Dr. Peter Garretson is a Senior Fellow in Defense Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council and a strategy consultant who focuses on space and defense. An Air Force veteran, he previously served as a strategy and policy advisor for the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, as Division Chief of Irregular Warfare Strategy Plans and Policy, and as the Chief of the Future Technology Branch of Air Force Strategic Planning. He is the coauthor of Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space.