Time to Revive the Spirit of JFK

As Russia and China Embrace Lunar Industrialization, the USA Embraces Zero Growth.

In these days of profound uncertainty, it is comforting knowing that certain fundamental truths still exist and serve as guiding lights through the dark waters.

Among the highest of those fundamental truths are those enunciated in 1967 by Reverend Martin Luther King, who ruminated over the dangers of imperialism and nuclear war by stating, “we still have a choice today: nonviolent co-existence or violent co-annihilation”.

When leaping ahead over five decades past the April 4, 1968 assassination of King to our present time, that truth stands as valid today as ever.

While asymmetric never-ending wars following the ‘Vietnam model’ have continued across the Middle East, and while the world faces no shortage of modern Dr. Strangeloves giddy over the visceral power offered by the red button, humanity’s obligation to recognize the scientific truthfulness of King’s words have existential importance.

In the face of today’s lunge towards extinction, the Greater Eurasian Partnership and broader Belt and Road initiative spreading across the face of the globe has pulled more people out of poverty and despair at rates unseen in all history. Yet an under-appreciated aspect of this dynamic has taken the form of the ever-expanding “space silk road,” which is what I’d like to discuss in this article.

For one thing, on June 16, 2024, Russia and China ratified treaties for the joint construction and operation of a permanent scientific base on the moon, with a goal of full industrialization and mining operations by 2040.

On top of that, China, which was banned from participating in space science with NASA in 2011 (with the passage of the Wolf Act under Barack Obama), will soon own the only functional international space station under the name of the Heavenly Kingdom.

China didn’t want to do this without the USA’s cooperation, but all offers to build this advanced program together were met with insults for over 13 years, resulting in China not only going it alone, but even outpacing the most advanced western technological breakthroughs, while becoming the first nation to land on the far side of the moon on January 3, 2019.

On June 24, 2024, China’s Chang’e-6 capsule landed in Mongolia after having taken soil samples from the far side of the moon, resulting in yet another world record for China.

The strategic role of the far side of the moon and its bountiful Helium-3 is a major game changing goal by the Chinese, which ties into China’s drive for commercially-viable fusion power, and merits an entire essay unto itself.

The technocrats managing US science policy have made certain that when the current International Space Station is retired, there will be no replacement. Instead of using the power of the sovereign nation state, private military contractors such as Boeing and Space X have been used by NASA to carry out space missions, resulting in vast cutting of safety standards, a profits-first logos not conducive to advanced and dangerous space programs and NASA astronauts stranded in space.

However, it didn’t have to be this way, and if the original design for the Artemis Accords, first unveiled by President Trump and former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine were not abandoned by Biden, then the USA could already be working together with Russia and China in reviving the spirit of John F Kennedy “to go beyond the limits of knowledge” in extending humanity’s economy to the unbounded principles of the universe.

Let us now review Kennedy’s dream for a world of space-based win win cooperation, the strategic history of space science, and the original design of the Artemis Accords, which must be revived if the USA is to survive the coming storm.

Kennedy’s Dream for Open System Economics

Kennedy’s September 20, 1963 United Nations speech championing the establishment of a joint U.S.-Russian space program is a testament of this strategic outlook, which has been too easily forgotten over the years. Additionally, Kennedy made it clear that space exploration generated long-term goals and intentions that would “serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills”.

The stochastic idea of economics defined as “hedonistic beasts with money seeking to maximize their pleasure and reduce their pain while buying low and selling dear” which free marketeers and libertarians advocated could never stand up to this higher conception of capitalism as outlined by Kennedy and the best American System traditions.

Nuclear technology that also emerged in the fires of war similarly found itself forged into tools of creation as well as destruction.

As nuclear bombs were built at record speeds on both sides of the Iron Curtain, civilian nuclear reactors began producing abundant, high quality, cheap energy at such rates that for the first time, billions of people could be alleviated from poverty forever.

While Russia was less fortunate with her efforts on the Moon, she landed 10 probes on the surface of Venus during the 1961-1984 Venera program, and began applying nuclear reactor technology to space craft, eventually sending out 30 nuclear reactor units in 30 years. In the USA, Kennedy unveiled a program for nuclear rockets under the NERVA program, and Project Rover, which promised to offer humanity a means of flying not only to the moon and mars, but to the furthest reaches of the solar system and beyond.

As the NERVA and Phoebus rockets passed all tests with flying colors (3), programs were outlined to begin Mars colonization, with plans to land on the red planet by August 1982.

Even in China, Premier Zhou Enlai had ensured that space pioneer Qian Xuesen had received state support to create a Chinese space program, which began in earnest with the 1958 Project 581, which aimed to put a satellite into orbit. Although suffering many setbacks throughout the 1960s-1980s, the Chinese resiliently pushed forward, eventually becoming the third nation to send astronauts into space through their own efforts.

Despite the intrigue and evil that dominated geopolitics these precarious years, the call of a new age of cooperation continued to resonate with milestone achievements, as the 1967 Space Treaty, 1969 Moon landing, and Apollo Soyuz 1975 cooperation between U.S. and Russian space agencies.

Russian stamp commemorating the 1975 Apollo Soyuz Space Cooperation plan

So, What Went Wrong?

So why did the Apollo Program, which had generated revolutionary technologies in every branch of economics and medicine find itself dissolved by 1973, with advanced Saturn rockets retired into museums?

Why were Kennedy’s offers to the Soviet Union dropped upon his death despite the fact that Khrushchev wrote of his desires that they happen?

Why did NASA’s budget peak in 1964, maxing at 4% of GDP and find its funding drained into the war in Vietnam, never to rise again?

Why were the nuclear rocket programs dismantled in 1972 despite having beaten all expectations?

Why did the Apollo-Soyuz program fail to serve as the foundation for a new era of space diplomacy?

The answer to this strange set of anomalies is found in the rise of a new breed of misanthropic statecraft called “neo-Malthusianism,” which took the levers of western foreign and internal economic policies over the dead bodies of pro-development leaders like Kennedy, Enrico Mattei, Dag Hammarskjold, Daniel Johnson Sr., Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

As the neo-Malthusian revolution was effected across western governments during this period, studies such as Limits To Growth began to promote a new wisdom of de-growth and conservation of ecosystems as a replacement for the “old wisdom” that cherished big infrastructure projects and scientific discovery as the driving ethic of humanity.

“Ecosystems” under this new age of digital computer modeling were increasingly defined as closed, thermodynamic processes bounded by mathematical homeostasis, and humanity was expected to adapt to those supposed limits like any other beast within nature.

One of the founders of the Canadian branch of the Club of Rome was Maurice Lamontagne (former President of the Privy Council Office,) who called out the problem of creativity itself in his 1968-1972 Science Policy Senate Reports:

“Nature imposes definite constraints on technology itself, and if man persists in ignoring them, the net effect of his action in the long run can be to reduce rather than to increase nature’s potential as a provider of resources and habitable space… But then, an obvious question arises: How can we stop man’s creativeness?”

Calling for a redirection of funding from science and discovery, which had the troubling effect of increasing humanity’s power over nature, and thus disrupting the mathematical equilibrium, which Malthusian computer models demanded govern all reality, Lamontagne stated:

“The new wisdom prescribes that the additional R&D effort be devoted to the life sciences and social sciences rather than the physical sciences… to economic and social objectives rather than curiosity and discovery.”

The 1970s-1990s saw the largest onslaught on all domains of science policy that involved discoveries into the universe of the immeasurably large (space science,) and immeasurably small (atomic science,) which threatened to disrupt the formulas for population limits that the new breed of neo-Malthusian craved in their quest for total power under a New World Order.

The Artemis Accords Pre-Biden

When they were first unveiled in 2019, the Artemis Accords put meat onto the bones of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty signed by 109 UN members, but which has never evolved beyond the vaguest of generalities.

In fact, this treaty was drafted and passed as UN resolution 1962 under the leadership of John F Kennedy, who had also called for ending the Cold War by introducing a new higher principle of US-Russian Cooperation on space science, with the aim of landing BOTH Russian and American astronauts on the moon.

Bridenstine and former Roscosmos chief Dimitry Rogozin

When the Artemis Accords were first announced in 2019, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stated optimistically,

“It’s a new dawn for space exploration! Today I’m honored to announce the Artemis Accords Agreements- establishing a shared vision and set of principles for all international partners that join in humanity’s return to the moon. We go, together!”

The pre-amble of the Artemis Accords, which is part of the broader Artemis Program signed into law by President Trump in 2017 stated the following:

“While NASA is leading the Artemis program, international partnerships will play a key role in achieving a sustainable and robust presence on the Moon while preparing to conduct a historic mission to Mars.”

The 10 accords deal with: 1) the primacy of peaceful purposes, 2) transparency, 3) interoperability of technologies, 4) emergency assistance between nations, 5) registration of space objects, 6) release and sharing of scientific data among nations, 7) protecting heritage sites such as the Apollo 11 site, 8) the development of space resources within the lunar regolith, 9) De-confliction of activities, and 10) orbital debris and space craft disposal.

These accords follow off of the earlier April 6, 2020 Executive Order signed by President Trump calling for an accelerated push towards lunar, mars and asteroid resource development. Three days after the Executive Order, the first of three phone calls were held between Presidents Trump and Putin, which included lengthy discussions on space cooperation.

12 days after the last of the three calls, both presidents published a Joint Declaration on the 75th Anniversary of the Meeting on the Elbe on April 25, which is not unconnected to the developments on space diplomacy outlined here.

Thus far, the important and uncharacteristic nature of America’s Artemis Accords is its focus on openness to international participation, and open system economics.

Outer space, being intrinsically open and composed almost entirely of undiscovered processes is thus open to creative thought and unbounded potential for growth and discoveries. Imperialists who chose to put humanity’s causal nexus on such material conditions as genes or geography (rather than ideas and intentions), obviously hate this sort of thinking.

A Fresh Chance at Russia-U.S.-China Collaboration

While the western mainstream media has promoted the narrative that this policy has nothing to do with Russian cooperation, the reality is the opposite.

One day after the May 15, 2020 accord, Russia Business Today published an article titled ‘Roscosmos Ready for Negotiations with NASA on Moon Exploration Projects’. In this article, Sergei Savalyev (deputy director general for Roscosmos on International Cooperation) stated,

“Ambitious projects connected to Moon colonization could become a serious factor for the interaction of the two countries in difficult times”.

Referring to the disturbing spread of misinformation promoting American “unwillingness to cooperate” with Russia, NASA’s spokesman Michael Gold stated,

“I think it’s unfortunate that there were a lot of media leaks that did not properly describe what the Artemis Accords were, so I’m surprised for some of those reactions… As we look at the Russian cooperation on Artemis, I expect a great deal of it. It may center around the gateway.”

In opposition to mainstream media narratives, Russia has not only been asked to join the accords, but has already begun cooperation on the Artemis program through its participation in the Lunar Gateway Project, which will see Japan, Europe, the USA and Russia co-create the world’s first lunar orbiting space station. Before this, Roscosmos and NASA had already signed a joint statement to collaborate on deep space exploration on September 27, 2017, stating,

“This joint statement reflects the common vision for human exploration that NASA and Roscosmos share. Both agencies, as well as other International Space Station partners, see the gateway as a strategic component of human space exploration architecture that warrants additional study. NASA has already engaged industry partners in gateway concept studies. Roscosmos and other space station partner agencies are preparing to do the same.”

Even though Russia supplies America with RD-180 and RD-181 rocket engines for American launch vehicles, and for years played a cooperative role with America not only on the International Space Station (ISS,) but also in getting American astronauts to the ISS since Obama killed the manned shuttle program in 2011.

Sadly, within seconds of Biden’s entry into the White House, Russia left the Lunar Gateway Project, which now sits stagnant on a drawing board, while Russia has raced to embrace China’s lunar program (along with the UAE, which became the first Arab nation to land a rover on Mars in 2021).

Flanking the War Hawks and Playing the China Card

Several weeks before the July 2011 murder of America’s manned shuttle program, Congress had passed the Wolf Act, outlawing all American-China collaboration on space science and technology under the narrative that “China’s cyber-espionage was a threat to American democracy”.

This anti-China ban had the opposite effect than that anticipated by the geopolitical warmongers, as China was suddenly forced to rely on their own creative powers, and leapt ahead of the space race, landing the first robot on the moon in 40 years in 2013, followed by their historic landing on the far side of the moon with the January 3, 2019 Jade Rabbit, and will soon have its own space station by 2021 named the “Harmony of the Heavens”.

All three nations (Russia, China and the USA) have made space exploration, lunar development, asteroid defense and Mars colonization high priorities.

With Russia having signed a joint lunar cooperation treaty with China’s space agency in September 2019, and with the 2024 finalization of the Russia-Chinese lunar development treaty, a new hope has emerged, which the USA might still be able to join: The Russian-Chinese re-activation of space exploration as a creative flanking maneuver to break humanity out of the rigged fixed rules of the Great Game, while also reviving the dream of attaching our destiny to the infinite.

This presentation was developed at even greater length in Breaking History Episode 53, viewable here.

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Badlands Media articles and features represent the opinions of the contributing authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Badlands Media itself.

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Matthew Ehret is the editor-in-chief of The Canadian Patriot Review, Senior Fellow of the American University in Moscow and Director of the Rising Tide Foundation. He has written the four volume Untold History of Canada series, four volume Clash of the Two Americas series and Science Unshackled: Restoring Causality to a World in Chaos. He is also co-host of The Multipolar Reality on Rogue News and Breaking History on Badlands Media.

If you enjoyed this contribution to Badlands Media, please consider checking out more of Matthew’s work for free on Substack.

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