Russian rockets blaze toward Ukraine and the Moon

In the wake of Russia’s aerial bombardment of Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s threats of nuclear war with NATO, Britain, the Nordic nations and the entire European Union, along with the US and Canada, are stepping up moves to shield their skies from Moscow’s missiles and fighter jets.

But while the free world’s airspace is becoming a continents-wide no-fly zone for Russian aircraft, Moscow is speeding to design a new haven for its aeronauts - beyond the jurisdiction of the Western democracies and far above their air force sentinels.

Even as he was placing troops, tanks, missiles and bombers in lethal battle formations poised to attack Ukraine, Vladimir V. Putin jetted off to Beijing to seal a sweeping entente with his Chinese counterpart, extending their burgeoning aerospace alliance.

As the world watched Moscow move nuclear-capable rockets within range of Ukraine’s capital (just after Russia’s ASAT missile blew up an orbiting satellite) the Russian and Chinese leaders paradoxically pledged in a nonaggression pact to prevent “an arms race in outer space.”

Aeronautical engineers across Russia and China are designing prototypes for heavy-lift rockets that will power their collective space dream - an eternal human outpost on the Moon. They are now accelerating plans for the first stage of this International Lunar Research Station.

China’s space agency recently released a complex roadmap for the Chinese-Russian Moon base, to be constructed - by robots and humans - “on the surface and/or the orbit of the Moon.” The twin powers’ spacecraft will reconnoitre the lunar surface for an ideal station site.

Scientists in Moscow and Beijing are now designing the base’s “command center” and nuclear power network. Like the rival space coalition created by NASA, they aim to capture the treasure trove of H2O believed hidden in the ancient shadowed craters of the Moon’s South Pole. 

Just days before sealing the new space pact with Russia, China’s leaders unveiled a fast-track timeline to begin building the lunar station over the next five years - virtually igniting a Space Race with NASA to rocket expeditionary teams and then settlers to the Moon.

Shellshock from Russia’s blitz on its ancient ally Ukraine sparked the European Space Agency to freeze joint missions with Moscow. Will China follow ESA’s lead, or gamble the Kremlin might prove a loyal lunar ally, holding in check the violent empire-building it deploys on Earth?

While the world’s gaze is now laser-focused on Ukraine, it might be blinded to the rising strategic union of two great powers that could have wider consequences. It is doubly blind to think the military build-ups now shaking the globe can long be confined to the planet’s surface.