Saturday, October 18, 2025

Opinions: Beating China through American 'special economic zones'

10/18/2025

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By Dan Robitzski

Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.

Special economic zones for restoring American space dominance

The real question is not whether the United States or China will send a crew to the moon before the other, but which country will dominate the future of space with superior industrial capacity, according to a recent opinion article by Tim Hwang and Quade MacDonald of the Foundation for American Innovation. And, they argue, China has a significant lead, predicting that China will lead the U.S. at sending a crew to the moon, establishing a presence in desirable locations on the moon and setting foot on Mars.

China's advantage comes from its special economic zones (SEZs), "regions free from bureaucratic interference and regulatory burden." And in order to course correct, MacDonald and Hwang wrote, America needs to establish the same.

"Adopting special economic zones for the companies needing to scale up their operations and increase launch cadence quickly would instantly change U.S. fortunes. SEZs would free space enterprises from the regulatory burden they are currently under to focus on the core goal of beating China to the moon."

Here's the rest of the article, including a call for a specific SEZ along the U.S.'s "space coast."

The Mars moment: Why now is the time to build the future

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck wrote that NASA and the broader space community needs to get serious about funding long-term infrastructure for future missions to Mars, if the United States is going to have a shot at leading Martian exploration and research.

That investment, Beck argued, "begins with fully funding and executing the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) as the first critical capability for sustained operations. Without it, future missions risk operating in isolation, with limited data return, degraded situational awareness and higher safety risks for astronauts. The time to act is before those missions launch, not after they arrive."

The risk, Beck wrote, is not "that MTO can't be built — it's that it won't be prioritized," leaving future Mars missions in jeopardy.

Read the full article here.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover used its dual-camera Mastcam-Z imager to capture this image inside of Jezero Crater on April 29, 2021. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / MSSS

Money is pouring into defense but dual-use is the real sweet spot

Rounding out this week, we have guidance for investors and space companies eager to expand their footprint in the commercial, civil and military space markets. Bogdan Gogulan is CEO and Managing Partner at NewSpace Capital, wrote an article identifying what he sees as the sweet spot between commercial and military contracts: developing dual-use technology that could appeal to a diverse customer base.

"There are many more customers — and there's much more money — in the commercial sector," Gogulan wrote. "So the key for space companies is to manage the pivot, which means resisting the temptation to turn their back on commercial markets. The companies that do that will benefit enormously, because that drip-drip-drip of defense funding can bring longer-term upside to the companies. Commercial is foundational; government business is the cherry on top. Another way to say this is that the sweet spot is dual-use. Companies whose innovations have both civil and defense applications are in the best possible position to enjoy the benefits that lie in both markets."

See the rest of his advice here.

SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community's diverse perspectives. Whether you're an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion@spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. The perspectives shared in these opinion articles are solely those of the authors.

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