“The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons,” Donald Trump declared near the close of his second inaugural address. “And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”

Good! That is an objective worthy of a nation of strivers in command of the world’s strongest economy — interrelated phenomena that explains Europe’s stagnation and China’s economic sluggishness amid Xi Jinping’s efforts to re-Sovietize its social compact. We should work towards a future in which the first boots to trod Martian soil are American boots. Space exploration is a human endeavor, and U.S cooperation with its partners abroad is vital. But a manned mission to Mars must be an unambiguously American accomplishment — not one attributable to a nebulous international consortium — if only because our adversaries seek that glory for themselves. Firsts are a zero-sum game.

And the United States can do it. We have the ingenuity, the business climate, the technological know-how, and the right mix of public and private enterprises to realize that objective. We won the moon, and we can win Mars.

Which reminds me . . . whatever happened to the moon? Our nearest celestial neighbor got short shrift in Trump’s inaugural remarks, but NASA hasn’t given up on its effort to return astronauts to its surface. Currently, the plan is to send a crewed mission into lunar orbit in April 2026. In September 2027, the third Artemis mission will land astronauts on its surface for the first time since 1972. This sequence of events culminates in a fourth Artemis mission that will transfer astronauts to the Gateway space station — a first-of-its-kind human presence in orbit around the moon.

That’s an ambitious schedule. And if NASA’s history is any indication, it’s one that is subject to revision as costs balloon and logistical hurdles mount. But it’s not the 1990s anymore. Private space exploration firms don’t just help NASA achieve escape velocity and fill its gaps — they lead by example. Indeed, just last week, the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace set off for a 60-day journey to the moon where it will attempt a landing for the first time since China’s Chang’e-4 touched down on the lunar south pole last summer.

The moon has become active geography of late, which makes its omission from Trump’s speech conspicuous. What gives? Well, a Politico dispatch earlier this month indicates that a turf war is brewing among Republicans in the House, Senate, and White House, with SpaceX proprietor Elon Musk pushing heavily on the scales. “We’re going straight to Mars,” Musk posted to his social media account recently, adding that focusing on returning to the moon represents a “distraction.” Congressional Republicans are leery of this approach, although Politico’s framing of the squabble places typical Beltway-style emphasis on what lawmakers hope to bring back to their districts:

The Mars-first strategy, though, would likely find little support on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers want to focus on preserving jobs tied to moon exploration efforts, support a lunar economy and beat China in space… A switch to Mars would impact programs such as the moon-focused Space Launch System, a multibillion-dollar rocket that provides jobs in numerous states. The rocket is a key part of Artemis, NASA’s effort to get back to the moon and eventually establish a lunar space station.

Everyone in Washington loves to bring home the bacon, but contributing to NASA’s penchant for wasteful constituent services isn’t why the United States must make both the moon and Mars a priority.

As I briefly described on this week’s episode of The Editors, the multinational sprint back to the moon — a race in which the U.S., China, Russia, India, the European Space Agency, Japan, and others are participating to one extent or another, betrays its importance. “The moon is no distraction, nor is its manned exploration a mission distinct from the development of the resources orbiting our sun,”

I wrote in 2023:

Being a leader in space exploration will mean making the moon into a way station. Its lack of atmosphere and reduced gravity make it an ideal refueling station on the way to other objects in the solar system, but the resources and investments necessary to see that project to completion are the exclusive province of governments. Developing the lunar surface is a force multiplier for commercial enterprises making tentative forays into lower orbit — tourism, yes, but also industrial applications and a platform to explore and extract materials from the resource-rich asteroid belt. But commercial space exploration enterprises such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic won’t be developing lunar infrastructure anytime soon.

Given the rare-earth platinum group metals on the moon, the presence of impossibly rare helium-3 isotopes (a promising fuel for a future in which sustained fusion-ignition power is no longer science fictional), and the water ice that can be transformed into rocket fuel — reducing the weight and, therefore, the cost of achieving escape velocity from earth’s atmosphere — the moon presents more potential for profitable enterprise than Mars. Indeed, there is little tangible value in a permanent presence on Mars save the prestige associated with getting there and staying there. But in a future in which mankind can navigate the inner solar system and exploit its resources, Mars will play a vital role just by virtue of its location at the edge of the mineral-rich asteroid belt.

“Just as New York City is not known for the beaver pelts it was founded to deliver to market but the financial services and cultural commodities it developed along the way, Mars will one day become a wealthy and innovative hub linking the resource-rich outer solar system to the inner planets,” I wrote for Commentary in 2019, citing Robert Zubrin’s crucial work on the commercial returns available to spacefaring nations. “But private enterprise will find the return on investment from early expeditions to Mars decidedly limited. Governments still have an important role to play in the opening of this new frontier.”

Realizing America’s profitable future in space will be a civilizational endeavor. Public and private enterprises will have to collaborate, and there can be no room for turf wars. In the near-term, it cannot be either the moon or Mars. It must be the moon and Mars. If it’s not both, it might just be neither.