ECLIPSED

THE US DECLARED A SPACE RACE WITH CHINAAND GAVE ITSELF ALMOST ZERO CHANCE OF WINNING.

- NOAH SHACHTMAN

THE SENATOR WANTED a promise. A solemn vow. For the last six years or maybe the last decade or quarter century, depending on how you count it-the United States and China had been locked in a space race, a contest to see which nation could put its people on the moon. Senator Ted Cruz wanted President Donald Trump's nominee to run NASA, Jared Isaacman, to pledge that the US would not lose.

Cruz brought a little surprise to Isaacman's confirmation hearing last April. It was a poster of the moon. On one side stood three astronauts and a giant Chinese flag. On the other were two more figures in space suits, with the tiniest Stars and Stripes planted in the lunar soil. Cruz apologized for the imbalance. "My team used ChatGPT," explained the senator, who chairs the committee that oversees NASA.

Then Cruz, with a bit more seriousness, asked Isaacman, "Do we have your commitment that you will not allow the scenario on the right of this poster to happen? That China will not beat us to the moon?" Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who had paid for his own missions to space, replied, "Senator, I only see the left-hand portion of that poster." It was a red-meat, fuck-yeah, pitch-perfect response. And Isaacman may have meant it. But by the time of his testimony, the Trump administration had started a process that would lay waste to NASA, pushing more than 4,000 agency employees to quit. Then the White House proposed a massive, 24 percent cut to NASA's budget. Then Trump yanked Isaacman's nomination and named a new part-time acting chief, a fellow who boasted in his official NASA biography that he is one-half of "America's first and longest-married reality TV couple." Then that guy picked a fight with Elon Musk, who's building NASA's moon lander. And Isaacman was back in the running.