Is a New Space Race on the Horizon?

Next week marks fifty years since Neil Armstrong took “one small step” on the moon’s surface. The Apollo 11 mission was an historic voyage, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy’s goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s. More than half a billion people watched the astronauts live on television. But in the years that followed, America’s interest and commitment to space exploration largely disappeared. 

Yet the country’s ambitions in space are far from over. In March of this year, Vice President Mike Pence expressed a renewed sense of urgency.

“Make no mistake about it — we're in a space race today, just as we were in the 1960s, and the stakes are even higher,” he told attendees at a meeting of the National Space Council in Alabama.

At the same meeting, Pence presented a new timeline for landing humans on the moon again: Within the next five years, four years sooner than the administration's initial timeline of 2028, leaving some to wonder if a new space race could be on the horizon.  

This week on Money Talking, Charlie Herman talks to Tim Fernholz, a reporter at Quartz covering space and author of Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the New Psace Race, about the latest chapter of space exploration.