Speaking with [Martin Giles](https://www.hoover.org/profiles/martin-giles) for an interview at *Defining Ideas*, space expert [Dan Berkenstock](https://www.hoover.org/profiles/dan-berkenstock), a distinguished research fellow at Hoover, points to a lunar convergence: The moon has taken on new significance for the United States because of Chinese competition, great leaps in technology, and soaring demand for energy and computing. As China’s ambitions give America its first significant national motivation to explore space in a half century, vast potential benefits of lunar exploration beckon. Yet issues of property rights, sovereignty, cooperation, and potential military clashes are far from solved. From the interview:
>If resources such as helium-3 do turn out to be highly valuable, or if the concentrations of those resources turn out to be highly variable, there will inevitably be contention for the best locations. Conflict could be as simple as disagreement while working through these issues via diplomacy at the United Nations. It could mean interference and degradation of robotic equipment on the lunar surface. It could mean armed conflict. This uncertainty is one of the aspects that make studying the lunar surface fascinating.
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Speaking with [Martin Giles](https://www.hoover.org/profiles/martin-giles) for an interview at *Defining Ideas*, space expert [Dan Berkenstock](https://www.hoover.org/profiles/dan-berkenstock), a distinguished research fellow at Hoover, points to a lunar convergence: The moon has taken on new significance for the United States because of Chinese competition, great leaps in technology, and soaring demand for energy and computing. As China’s ambitions give America its first significant national motivation to explore space in a half century, vast potential benefits of lunar exploration beckon. Yet issues of property rights, sovereignty, cooperation, and potential military clashes are far from solved. From the interview:
>If resources such as helium-3 do turn out to be highly valuable, or if the concentrations of those resources turn out to be highly variable, there will inevitably be contention for the best locations. Conflict could be as simple as disagreement while working through these issues via diplomacy at the United Nations. It could mean interference and degradation of robotic equipment on the lunar surface. It could mean armed conflict. This uncertainty is one of the aspects that make studying the lunar surface fascinating.
The first astronaut was Chinese after all
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