The U.S. will seize space leadership – or China will take it

America faces a choice in space: lead or follow. There’s no middle ground anymore.

China is methodically executing a plan to dominate the moon and cislunar space. The question isn’t whether someone will control humanity’s next economic frontier — it’s whether that someone will be us or them. And if we want it to be us, we need to consider our cultural blind spots.

It’s time to fundamentally rethink how America approaches space. The old divisions between civil and military space programs made sense during the post-Cold War era.

Today, they’re strategic liabilities we can’t afford. With strong leadership at NASA under Jared Isaacman, the Space Force under Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and agencies like DARPA under Stephen Winchell, in 2026 we will see new collaboration between U.S. military, civil and commercial space.

Two competitors, two realms, two postures

In civil space, NASA’s Artemis program tells one story. These missions showcase impressive technology, but they also showcase a government program mired in cost overruns, technical setbacks, insufficient funding, strategic whiplash and bureaucratic delays that have become crippling.

China tells a different story. In June 2024, the Chang’e 6 mission became the first to return samples — 1,935 grams of material — from the lunar far side. China is advancing its crewed lunar program with plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030, and it’s investing with Russia and others to build the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).

China is going to the moon — and it’s building coalitions that could allow it to set the rules for how humanity will operate there.

Our competitors, unburdened by politics, are leaning into the newest frontier of warfighting and continue to demonstrate new forms of calculated aggression that challenge us to play catch-up.

Time to break down barriers

The traditional separation between civil and military space activities served important purposes near the end of the Cold War and its aftermath. NASA’s civilian character enabled international partnerships; the Department of Defense’s focus ensured national security advantages.

Today, everything the United States does in space has national security implications. Civil exploration of, and military advantage in, the space domain contribute to our national interests. Wherever we have these noble national prestige goals, we’re going to see competition among the great powers. With that competition comes the possibility of conflict.

NASA, correctly, is not expected, empowered or equipped to deal with conflict. The U.S. Space Force should be. It has become empowered and expected to maintain advantage, and has made remarkable progress standing up a new service. But it’s still building the comprehensive capabilities needed for contested cislunar operations — an environment very different from the GEO and LEO domains where we’ve operated for decades.

So how do we maintain our national interests in the civil and military realms?

Embrace joint programs, don’t run from them. This doesn’t mean NASA should become an extension of the military. Rather, it means both communities must work together more seamlessly on common challenges.

One can see a near future where civil and military principals from Space Force, NASA, DARPA and the NRO work together — more than just coordinate — to initiate and motivate an avalanche of mutually-beneficial pilot projects that will accelerate American space dominance, particularly in the cislunar volume.

The United States needs to recognize that space infrastructure, technological advancement and economic development are inherently dual-use. This applies across nearly all capabilities and systems: sensors, power, propulsion, communications, navigation, data, logistics, transportation, construction and assembly, resource utilization and launch.

NASA’s Artemis program already demonstrates this model through commercial partners like SpaceX and Blue Origin who serve both civil and defense customers. The federal government should scale this approach and stop pretending there’s a wall between peaceful exploration and national security.

The real Space Race: economic dominance

The Cold War was in many ways an economic competition — capitalism versus communism. Today’s space competition operates differently.

Both the U.S. and China leverage market mechanisms, state investment and commercial partnerships. The difference lies in execution speed and strategic coherence.

America’s advantage remains our robust commercial space sector. Companies like SpaceX, Intuitive Machines, Blue Origin and dozens of emerging firms are developing capabilities that would have seemed impossible a decade ago.

The challenge is harnessing this innovation for strategic advantage while maintaining our economic model’s fundamental strengths: entrepreneurship, risk-taking and competitive markets.

To maintain American economic leadership in the space domain, the U.S. government should do three things right away:

First, create deeper government-industry partnerships that share both risk and reward.

Treat commercial space companies like strategic partners. Give them the freedom to innovate. Don’t be prescriptive. In some cases, hand over the reins more fully and allow non-governmental partners to be full service providers, executing entire programs or missions.

For technology solutions, agencies should build new tech only when they must.
Second, dramatically increase strategic investments in dual-use technologies through mechanisms like SBIR and direct procurement.

Third, modernize our regulatory frameworks. The current export control, launch licensing and spectrum allocation systems were designed for an era of rare government space missions.

Today, with hundreds of commercial launches annually, these processes have become bottlenecks choking innovation. Congress could pass new laws, such as the LAUNCH Act introduced this summer, that will help end the regulatory barriers that are blocking America’s access to space.

We need rules that enable rather than impede commercial space while ensuring safety and security.

Establishing presence, setting rules

America needs boots on the ground — or rather, systems in position — at strategically important locations: the Earth-moon Lagrange points; in low lunar orbit; at resource-rich areas of the lunar south pole; in key cislunar orbital regimes and even within the digital real estate of the frequency spectrum.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the U.S. Space Force must be better equipped and prepared for this mission.

This means real capabilities: rapid maneuver systems; enhanced space domain awareness and the ability to respond to threatening activities, whether from other space-faring national states or rogue actors. Our competitors and enemies are building these capabilities. We have to choose between beating them to it, keeping pace or playing catch-up.

Why this matters

None of this matters if we lose sight of why we’re doing it.

For national security, space superiority is about ensuring space remains available to support joint military operations while enabling intelligence gathering and providing strategic warning.

We must understand that space superiority is about maintaining a space advantage to help in the joint fight.

For civil space, superiority is about improving the human condition through scientific discovery, technological advancement and expanding humanity’s presence beyond Earth. It’s about solving problems on Earth through innovations developed for space.

These missions might seem as if they conflict, but they can complement one another. This is about ensuring space remains a domain where free nations can operate, innovate and prosper — not one where authoritarian powers dictate terms.

The window is closing

China spent roughly $19 billion on space in 2024. America spent far more — but China is gaining ground through focused execution and long-term planning that’s insulated from political disruption. While we debate and delay, they build and launch.

The U.S. cannot afford to watch and wait. We have the commercial capabilities. We have the technological base. We have alliance networks that China can’t match. What we need is strategic coherence and the will to act.

Our government must break down the unnecessary barriers between civil and military space. Doing so means accelerating commercial partnerships, establishing presence in key domains before competitors lock us out and maintaining capabilities to respond when others threaten our interests.

The choice is stark: seize the initiative now, or spend the next century buying space services from China and operating under rules Beijing wrote.

2026 is the year we decide. Lead or follow. Win or lose. It’s up to us.

Kurt “Spuds” Vogel is an aerospace consultant and previously served as NASA’s associate administrator for space technology and director of space architecture after 32 years in leadership positions in the U.S. Department of Defense.

This article first appeared in the January 2026 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.

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