To Be Great Again, America Needs a "Musk Moment"

Zhuque has silenced America. SpaceX's repeated successes in rocket recovery drove home one point: American business works. And China? How could a feat achieved by marshaling the strength of an entire nation possibly compare with a private outfit pulling off a mission impossible?

Cast your mind back. The Clinton boom, built on the information superhighway, delivered four consecutive fiscal years of budget surplus. From 2015 onwards, SpaceX achieved rocket recovery, putting American commercial spaceflight at least a decade ahead of China. What more could anyone say? Behold the splendor of America's overall national power!

At 7:35 this morning, the reusable Zhuque-3 Y2 carrier rocket lifted off smoothly. Its builder is LandSpace, a Chinese commercial space company founded, coincidentally, in that very same year of 2015. The mission report reads: "About 137 seconds after liftoff, the first and second stages separated. The first stage then began its return sequence. After key maneuvers including high-altitude attitude adjustment, deceleration and aerodynamic gliding, it made a successful soft landing at the Gansu landing pad at 7:43. The flight test was a complete success."

A few points are worth adding. First, the Zhuque-3 Y1 made its maiden flight on December 3, 2025. It successfully delivered a satellite into its designated orbit, though its first-stage vertical recovery test failed.

Second, eight months on, Zhuque-3 has delivered on its mission, a task of major significance. Zhuque becomes our country's second reusable rocket after the Long March 10B.

Third, mind you, the Long March rockets belong to the "national team."

Fourth, China's state and commercial space programs are setting sail like "twin dragons out to sea." America is feeling the competitive pressure.

SpaceX has made a blockbuster stock market debut. The world is counting on America, following the internet, to lead the globe once more through space technology. The hope is a replay of the Clinton-era golden age. SpaceX pulled off the first successful recovery of a Falcon 9 rocket, then industrialized the technology. Today it launches the Falcon 9 around 150 times a year, roughly three times a week. A single booster can be reused dozens of times.

Yet even before the successful recovery of the Zhuque-3 Y2, American think tanks were already worried. China, doing things the Chinese way, has achieved recovery in both state-run and commercial spaceflight, with equally precise touchdown points. China's "catch-up" is no longer out of reach.

What deserves attention is this: China's state and commercial sectors are advancing in tandem, while NASA has widely adopted the commercial model. In return-to-the-Moon programs such as Artemis, NASA has contracted out uncrewed lunar landers, precursor satellite launches and even rocket servicing and replenishment support to multiple private space companies. Commercial players such as SpaceX, Firefly Aerospace and Rocket Lab are the mainstays.

Two years ago, analyses weighed the relative strengths of the Chinese and American space programs. Commentators argued that NASA's shift from "designing and building in-house" to "commercial contracting" would push national scientific talent out of front-line positions. Over the long run, that would weaken the state's "deep control and independent assessment capability" over space technology.

And if complex spaceflight life-support systems or new space station designs were left entirely to private leadership, NASA would face the twin hazards of technology and risk. Boeing's Starliner saga, which stranded two American astronauts on the International Space Station for a full nine months, is in its own way the same tune as today's USS Abraham Lincoln incident. Go figure.

The pair finally left the station "smoothly" aboard a SpaceX Dragon on March 18, 2025. They landed safely back on Earth the next day. Trump sang Musk's praises for a job well done.

A quick explainer: history has seen a so-called "Sputnik moment." In truth, it was a "Sputnik" crisis for America. In 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1, humanity's first artificial satellite. The phrase has since come to describe the turning point when a nation suddenly realizes it is lagging a rival in technology or a critical field. That realization triggers an acute sense of crisis and an urgent drive to catch up.

President Kennedy led America out of the Sputnik crisis with the Apollo lunar landing program. Today, can America build a crewed Mars program to overtake its rival? Musk, this round is all on you. Stop firing off low-orbit satellites like crazy to rake in cash. The day a crewed Mars landing succeeds will be the ultimate MAGA moment. Let's keep at it, together.

Deep Blue

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The US is not important. The US didn't matter! You can say I said it. Why? Read the news today.

"Japan will conduct tests of hypersonic missiles and other projectiles on Australian soil, the two countries’ defense ministers said yesterday as they deepened military cooperation, including with a codeveloped laser system."

Australia and Japan are carrying out a project called  'Boobook'. The name highlights the night vision of this Australian owl. The project includes developing enhanced laser capabilities for land and near-shore combat platforms.

Koizumi welcomed the outcome. He said: "If the Japan Self-Defense Forces are able to conduct test launches of standoff missiles, such as hypersonic missiles, in Australia, it would be a groundbreaking development. We will therefore accelerate discussions toward realising this objective."

Foreign media pointed out that Australia and Japan, seeing China's growing influence, have strengthened defense cooperation. They noted that the two sides reached a procurement agreement last year, under which Australia will pay 10 billion Australian dollars over 10 years to acquire a batch of Japanese stealth frigates, marking one of Japan's largest defense export deals since World War II.

The Nuclear Temptation: Australia's Uranium and Japan's Ambition

Last month, Australia threw another $3.2 billion at its domestic nuclear submarine build. That's AUKUS money. The 2021 pact with the UK and US was designed to push back against China's Indo-Pacific surge. The word is, starting in 2030, Canberra will snap up several Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

Mind you, Australia is a mineral powerhouse. It has long been seen as a country with huge nuclear energy potential. It has abundant uranium deposits in Queensland, the Northern Territory, and South Australia. Over the past decade, annual production has topped 7,000 tonnes. But in 1998, Australia slammed the door on nuclear facilities. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act explicitly bans building or operating any nuclear facilities.

The temptation isn't new. Back in the 1960s, Australia was already flirting with nuclear construction. But it backed off, worried that building nuclear facilities would raise eyebrows about developing nuclear weapons. So it embraced a 'non-nuclear' identity.

But as the saying goes, once tempted, the thought never quite goes away. In 2019, during Trump's first term, an Australian scholar posed the question: what if Australia had nuclear weapons? That officially cracked open the nuclear Pandora's box.

In July 2019, RFI painted a picture of the good life. Australia had a century-old alliance with the United States, the gold standard of security guarantees. Meanwhile, it was shipping raw materials to China, fueling an economic boom that hadn't seen a recession in 28 years.

But the good times didn't last. Trump, in his first term, couldn't care less about the Asia-Pacific alliance. Australia, meanwhile, felt the heat from China's rising power. Canberra had always thought the risks were too high, and Washington was just watching from the bleachers. But with Trump, that whole strategy could be blown up by a single tweet. And the threats themselves were morphing.

The report noted that Canberra knew going nuclear was a double-edged sword. Even a limited nuclear deterrent would come with enormous economic, political, diplomatic, and social costs.

Pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and you'd infuriate your neighbors all at once. And with Australia's sparse population, if war broke out, conventional weapons alone might not be enough to defend the continent.

Japan's nuclear ambition? From Abe to Takaichi, it's an open secret. The real question is this: with Japan and Australia now teaming up on long-range hypersonic weapons, is that Pandora's box swinging a little too wide open?

The Fallout: A Chaotic Asia-Pacific and the Search for Self-Reliance

Japan is a country with huge nuclear potential. It already fields quasi-aircraft carriers, large destroyers, and submarines.

Now picture it going nuclear, with the Japan-Australia partnership as its platform. Tell me, how chaotic would the Asia-Pacific become?

But look at it from Australia and Japan's perspective. If the United States is folding up its stall even in the Middle East, why wouldn't Asia-Pacific allies plan for their own security?

Alright, that's it for today. Let me end with a cliché: May the world be at peace, and may the Asia-Pacific be calm and tranquil.