Ex-Nasa boss slaps down China declaring US won the space race 55 years ago ahead of Apollo Moon landing anniversary

TOMORROW it will be exactly 55 years since mankind first – and last – stepped foot on the Moon.

The anniversary has arrived in a refuelling period, as the US ramps up efforts to return, and forge more permanent connections to the lunar surface.

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Neil Armstrong took mankind’s first steps on the Moon, with an estimated 650million people watching at home[/caption]

Chuck Kennedy/KRT/ABACA

Of course, the US is not alone in that ambition.

After throwing billions behind its homegrown space efforts, and cementing a collaboration with Russia, China finally admitted last week that the US is a competitor on the Moon.

It’s the first time China has used such language in relation to its off-planet projects.

But there will be no renaissance for the space race of the 1960s, former Nasa administrator, Sean O’Keefe, has told the Sun.

“There’s an attempt to try to characterise this stuff as a race,” O’Keefe said, just weeks before China declared it themselves.

“That race has been had. It was done 55 years ago.”

Lots has changed in the past half-century.

“Now you’ve got several different nation states that have the capacity to get there,” explained O’Keefe.

“This is not the easiest trick in the world,” he continued.

“But at the same time, it is much more accessible today than we ever would have thought about it being 55 years ago.”

Returning to the Moon a second time may be easier than the first.

Still, commemorative medallions bearing the names of the three Apollo 1 astronauts who lost their lives in a launch pad fire, and two cosmonauts who also died in accidents, rest on the moon’s surface to this day. 

Despite the human cost of the earlier days of spaceflight, today’s astronauts don’t exactly have an easy ride.

“I wouldn’t say that yet,” said O’Keefe, before adding: “I think it is safer than what it’s been.

“You can’t describe anything that is a one in 100 chance of, you know, an explosion – which is what the shuttle was.

“That was it. That was the real statistic.

“I mean, there was a lot of celebration at Nasa when everybody figured out that maybe we’ve improved that to one in 250.

“But that’s still pretty damn dangerous. It’s still very exploratory.”