This space race is different for one core reason: China is more stable than the Soviet Union was in the 1960s.
If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth. They'll keep going, and they have the economic base to expand their program.
I think we're seeing the beginning of a new kind of space race. It's likely to be much longer term and grander in scale over time, as we compete for the best spots on the Moon and the first human landing on Mars in the decades to come.
IMHO the previous race ended because there wasn't that much to be achieved with the technology at hand at that time. They just pivoted to space stations, a space(!) with low hanging fruit.
So if US ends up beating China on this, it will all depend if there's something feasible to do next. I'm under impression that everything done in this new space age so far is just a re-do with the cheaper and better technology. SpaceX reaping that but I am not sure if there's any drastically better capabilities. Can't wait for humans on Mars however I don't expect this to be anything more than vanity project.
I’m looking forward for gigantic civilian space stations in Earth and Moon orbit. I think that’s feasible, we aren’t getting interplanetary anytime soon but we can expand to the orbit and our Moon.
> Did the USSR ever manufacture 80% of the stuff in your house?
China makes about a third of the world’s stuff [1]. Soviet Union probably peaked around a fifth, though it might have been as high as a fourth.
China is undoubtedly stronger today, absolutely and relative to the U.S., than the Soviets ever were. But history is littered with self-obsessed autocrats ruining a good thing.
Part of what makes the world today frustrating is both America and China are squandering their advantages in remarkably-similar ways, with each regime’s defenders speaking almost identically.
That isn't what the commenter asked. What percentage of stuff in your house is made in China? I would be extremely surprised if it's not more than 33%.
> Part of what makes the world today frustrating is both America and China are squandering their advantages in remarkably-similar ways, with each regime’s defenders speaking almost identically.
Personalist rule be personalist. Also glad to see you also appear to recognize our "Wolf Warrior" moment.
If they had manufactured 80% of the stuff in my house, wouldn't Reagan have concluded that they had won the war before it started? A country that manufactures 80% of the things you need to live might just decide to not sell them to you if you misbehave.
Yes, but the real question is if Reagan still would have pushed as hard for financialization and deindustrialization if he understood that he was ultimately selling American industry to communists.
I think he would have. I think he hated American labor more than he hated foreign communists. If his head were still around in a Futurama Jar to comment on the matter, I think he would be blaming American workers for the consequences of his own policies.
Reagan didnt push for deindustrialization and "the world is flat" world view didn't take precedence until after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s.
At the time, everyone was still optimistic that China would eventually become more open and even democratic, that Russia would not regress, etc.
It was still common for electronics and microprocessors to be made in USA well into the 90s. Reagan had nothing to do with the expansion of WTO and trade deficits with China that ballooned under HW, Clinton, Bush Jr and Obama.
You can't have financialization without deindustrialization and he didn't push in that direction, he shoved. This macroeconomic story is 500 years old. He knew what he was doing.
I agree there is a lot of chaos over there, and numerous challenges. But I don't see China collapsing anytime soon, nothing like the Soviet Union. It's going to be a long-term space race.
> I don't see China collapsing anytime soon, nothing like the Soviet Union
I don’t either. But the Soviet Union’s space programme lost its steam in the 1970s. (Venus was its last ambitious achievement.)
If China gets bogged down in Taiwan because Xi fired every military expert who might disagree with him, that’s going to cost them the space race. (Same as if America decides to replicate the Sino-Soviet split with Europe over Greenland. We can’t afford a competitive space programme at that point.)
The odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil. They could face an insurgency, but there isn't a whole lot of rural Taiwan for insurgents to vanish into and occupying cities is a lot easier absent language and cultural barriers. The could be isolated politically and economically, but realistically China's territorial claim on Taiwan is on far firmer legal and historical ground than many other territorial disputes (eg their control over Tibet).
I don't see the US involving itself directly. What are they going to do, counter-blockade? Start a naval shooting war with a full-on nuclear power on the other side of the world? I don't see Japan backing that either, despite their natural anxiety over the vulnerability of the Ryukyu islands. Support for US bases in Okinawa is ambivalent at best, and while Japan is surely not thrilled about Chinese regional hegemony it's also a reality they've dealt with for thousands of years.
> odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil
The odds of them winding up in a Russia-Ukraine are not nil. (Combined-arms war is hard even without ideological purges.)
America isn’t only outside power investing not only in helping Taiwan fight, but also making any victory pyrrhic. And following that, we’ll see Indian and Japanese containment go into overdrive. (To say nothing of the Philippines or Vietnam.)
I think Xi probably takes Taiwan. But that trades off China’s century of prosperity on economic and diplomatic fronts. That’s the trap the West has been laying, and Xi’s ego and internal constraints almost force him into it.
(Again, if China had showed its pre-Xi patience in the 2010s, we might have seen Taiwan voting to unify right now. Instead he rushed things for personal glory and enrichment.)
I really don't agree on the Russia-Ukraine comparison; I just can't see where the Taiwanese strategic depth is supposed to come from. In an earlier era it would have been feasible to conduct and insurgency from mountainous redoubts and infiltration around ports, but I really can't see that happening with a 21st century urbanized population, in the same way that Russia's strategic problem in Ukraine is the ability to maintain/grow it's front, rather than difficulty sustaining its gains in the rear. However I've never been there so I'm sure I'm overlooking ground factors that might make a big difference.
I agree with you about Xi's impatience but I think you're overestimating the political and economic fallout in the same way that people overestimated the ramifications of China retaking and consolidating its control of Hong Kong. The latter is definitely not politically free in the way it used to be but nor has it fallen into decline or dystopia.
> The odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil.
Exactly. Everyone keeps acting like it's 50 years ago. China has the world's largest navy and the largest navy almost always wins. They also have a home court advantage. Anyone trying to militarily protect Taiwan would either get the pants beat off of them or suffer starting a world war.
Look at the geography.
Taiwan is a long, narrow island. All the important parts are in a narrow plain on the west side, facing China. There's only about 20km of depth from the sea.
The war in Ukraine is like fighting over Iowa, one farm at a time.
Taiwan is not like that.
Although I agree the space program lost steam, I'd still count the Mir space station (1985) and Buran space shuttle (1988) to both be ambitious achievements.
> because Xi fired every military expert who might disagree with him
Are they being fired for disagreeing with him, or for misconduct.
I mean its hard to tell the difference from a western country, but "Zhang was put under investigation for allegedly forming political cliques, promoting Li Shangfu as defense minister in exchange for large bribes, and leaking core technical data on China's nuclear weapons to the United States."
There's a question as to whether China's surplus capability is enough to overflow the deprivation that a space program might suffer in a chaos Taiwan scenario.
Their resources and capabilities are obviously substantial and sustained (not going anywhere). The USSR had only a few patches of sustained serious economic output, the rest of the time was rolling from one disaster to another, one deprivation after another.
It seems entirely plausible that China getting bogged down in Taiwan wouldn't be enough to deprive them of a run to the Moon. The US was able to sustain NASA during Iraq-Afghanistan, and go to the Moon during the Vietnam War (plus cultural chaos).
That said, China isn't going to get bogged down in Taiwan. It's going to unfortunately be easier than most are imagining. China will ultimately regret not moving on the island sooner when they see how easy it's going to be to take it and how weak the US response will be (the US can't sustain a stand-off with China in that region for more than a few weeks before folding, unless it's willing to go to full war mode economically (which it's not)).
> seems entirely plausible that China getting bogged down in Taiwan wouldn't be enough to deprive them of a run to the Moon. The US was able to sustain NASA during Iraq-Afghanistan
We probably lost basing on the Moon because Bush went into Iraq.
China getting bogged down in Taiwan means more political repression, more restiveness in Xinjiang and—if New Delhi isn’t totally stupid—needing to prop up Pakistan and its strategic fronts in the Himalayas. It also almost certainly means demand destruction in Europe, the EU and ASEAN.
> China isn't going to get bogged down in Taiwan. It's going to unfortunately be easier than most are imagining
The same people saying this today had hot takes on Kyiv falling in ‘21.
China invading Taiwan demilitarized Japan and India. It fundamentally changes its doorstep in ways that incur costs. To the Soviets, Afghanistan. To America, Iraq and possibly Greenland. To China, Taiwan.
(And let’s be clear: this is a vanity project for Xi. Taiwan would have voted, eventually, to peacefully join China if pre-Xi trends continued. But he needed it on his watch. Hence the stupidity.)
> And let’s be clear: this is a vanity project for Xi. Taiwan would have voted, eventually, to peacefully join China if pre-Xi trends continued. But he needed it on his watch. Hence the stupidity.
From what I've been hearing from my buddies still in the NatSec space what matters at this point is the 2028 Taiwanese Election and maybe the 2028 Philippines Election. If neither see a definitive victory for either side in 2028, it gives a face saving off-ramp for the Xi admin to argue they brought the "Taiwan Problem" back on track to the pre-2014 status quo. Of course they could be closeted KMT/TPP supporters but most delivery roadmap's I've been hearing align with a 2028 date.
>The same people saying this today had hot takes on Kyiv falling in ‘21.
Please note that Kiev not falling after a week in '22 (assuming you misspelled) was pure luck. Russians had extreme advantage in man and firepower. They made a big mistake by using their army against their doctrine - not bombing/shelling targets before attacking (what Russian army was designed for).
But them losing the war (at least the first week) is due to a few lucky dice rolls for us. Us both Europe, but also for me as a Polish expat, knowing my brothers and friends are not dying right now fighting Russian army with all the Ukrainians conscripted into it.
These lucky dice rolls that I can come up from memory:
1. Shooting down one of two military passenger planes with russian Seals that were to take Kiev's Hostomel airport and open an air bridge. The group from the plane that survived did take the airfields, but they couldn't decide on their own to move and take the airports buildings - no distributed command in Russia at that point. Thanks to that, local territorial defence managed to easily kill these elite forces.
2. Fast and generous support from England in form of Javelins that limited Russian heavy equipment advantage. Sorry if I don't credit the countries involved correctly.
3. Fast and generous aid with post soviet equipment from old Warsaw pact countries. These tanks could be used right away as they required no re-training.
4. General incompetence and duty negligence that was systemic in Soviets and is still systemic in Russia. To that we owe cars running out of fuel, or having their tires pop, because, against orders to regularly move them, they all sat with sun damaging one side of the tire so many years, while the responsible for maintenance were drinking vodka and eating pierogi with kielbasa.
Putin ignored his army and tasked the FSB with the project. He fundamentally got fucked by putting loyalty ahead of merit. It’s what Hegseth is doing in America and now Xi, again, in China.
Vietnam frontline experience is irrelevant in 2026, when its more drone dominated.
Im sure China has plenty of observers/volunteers embedded at the Russian side in the SMO making plenty of notes, reports, and get modern warfare experience..
All frontline experience is valuable. It reminds the leader that in war, real people, people on your own side, people that you know, people that you will miss, will die.
and in this case the particulars match the archetype: my understanding is that Zhang was the "dove" while Xi is the "hawk." The hawk just ate the dove. We're going to war.
Xi appointed himself president for life in 2018, almost six years ago. China wasnt exactly a bastion of liberal democracy before then either. Sacking a top general is basically par for the course.
> Sacking a top general is basically par for the course
Yes and no. Military readiness and potency doesn’t require liberal democracy. It does require skill and command, and sacking military leaders for political reasons is how powers from Athens to the Soviets screwed themselves.
Yeah but the question of stability was relative to the Soviets. The US has a good amount of instability as well, and has been hemorrhaging scientists lately.
So if the argument is that sacking a top general implies that China is too unstable to prevail in a future space race I don’t buy it.
Purge seems like a strong word from what I just read. There definitely seems to be actual and power plays going on on his side. It's not exactly because he was out there doing the best for people.
But how is this less stable than even the United States now? Trump has literally purged nearly every single person leading federal agencies and institutions, including law enforcement. He also effectively stacked the Supreme Court with the help of Mitch McConnell, cheating the system to do his bidding.
Keep in mind that China is not where it is today because of Xi. He could take it further for sure but so can he press the wrong buttons. It remains to be seen how China fares in the next few decades.
Yep, China was on a massive and insane growth trajectory prior to Xi. Xi's policies and constant banging of war drums at Taiwan's door has cost China massively in terms of foreign investment and even knowledge transfer opportunities (by the ever-gullible West).
> the same trite bullshit we’ve been hearing for decades
Nope. It isn’t. Xi has ruled China like a dictator that breaks the tradition of intraparty competition the CCP has had since Mao.
When Xi ended his Wolf Warrior nonsense it seemed to signal a reset. Now we have this nonsense.
> Look at where China is today
Look at where America is today. Both are richer than they’ve ever been. More militarily potent than ever. Both are growing their economies, militaries and territorial ambitions. Both have serious issues, including the gerontocratic oligarchic consolidation of power at the expense of national interests.
The argument is the reflexive defensiveness works-and is raised—in both cases. Premature declarations of victory have never been a historic sign of strength.
My metric would be what the country’s population today and weighted populations of the future, if they could weigh in, would choose.
It’s possible to frame ex post facto and impossible to pin down in the present. And it’s inherently subjective and culturally relative. But it’s useful to reason with, including for finding patterns in history.
One pattern is the cost of corruption. If a leader is making billions off their power, they’re putting person about polity. That’s currently true in America [1] and China [2][3]. The difference is America has a chance to fix that in ‘28. China used to rotate leaders. But Xi fucked that up. (Note the language similarity between the above comment and how MAGA defends itself. “Trite bullshit.” Beijing has a hidden MACA problem, it’s just had a tougher time dealing with it because Xi reveres Mao.)
> Where could China have been today if it started opening up decades earlier?
Or without Mao being a trash fire of a leader. (Flip side: where would they be without Deng or Zemin, or others in the CCP who put nation above personal interest? The folks Xi is killing because they threaten his personal interests.)
Maybe the combination of capitalism + democracy is so successful because it aligns the incentives of leaders and the masses best (to the extent possible).
My takeaway from China is democracy is less important than political competition. Between Mao and Xi, the CCP had the latter without the former. Today, America has the former and is struggling to keep the latter.
I think not. European colonialism was hardly a democratic project, and the extreme success of the US is attributable less to ideology and more to being an entire continent with a relatively tiny indigenous population that had not exploited any of its natural resources. Ideological/paradigmatic competition is not some neat controlled experiment where you can normalize existing conditions to unity and then draw conclusions from measuring subsequent growth; initial resource distributions make a massive difference and geography, while not the only factor, is highly determinative.
China had fallen behind long before Mao, after being among the most powerful and advanced nations for most of recorded history. It appears to now be stepping back into that familiar role.
Neither China or the West handled the transition to industrial civilization well. A key difference is that most Chinese died due to incompetence on the part of their leaders, but in the west they mostly murdered one another on purpose.
Once again a Nazi is in charge of the western world's most advanced rocket program.
It's amazing. The American president is quite literally creating a parallel military force to jail and kill people on the streets, they're arresting opposing journalists, politicians, pressuring tv channels and news organizations to fire people, invading countries without congressional approval, threatening allies with annexation for no fucking reason, dismantling any social programs left, and all of that led by a proven pedophile billionaire that was the customer and friend of a huge human trafficker, as were most of his billionaire friends who he favors with absolutely no shame.
And this is just the latest news coming from over there. I won't mention the fact that there are people alive today who couldn't drink from the same fountain as other people because their skin is dark. It was never fucking great.
So if you are American and still talk all this shit about China being a dictatorship and authoritarian this and “purge” that, I wish you would honestly shut the fuck up. Really. You are in no position to have an informed opinion on this because all of your information is force fed down your throat by half a dozen mega companies that are in bed with your regime.
So yeah, I'm sure China has a lot of issues, but if you didn't live there for some time or even speak the language for that matter, just shut the fuck the up.
No. I didn’t vote for that, and I’m not going to meekly give up on talking shit about the US and other countries. This idea that you have to be perfect to comment on anything imperfect needs to die.
> if you are American and still talk all this shit about China being a dictatorship and authoritarian this and “purge” that, I wish you would honestly shut the fuck up. Really. You are in no position to have an informed opinion on this because all of your information is force fed
Bit defensive there, eh?
China is an autocracy and Xi is acting in the predictably self-destructive ways a dictator does. The U.S. is heading down that same path, with Trump practically mimicking Xi. N = 2 doesn’t weaken an argument. And folks who lived through the Nazis saying they see similar veins today doesn’t undermine their credibility.
(The hilarity of it is if you take your comment and replace China and America with partisan or pro-American coding, you could pop it out of Hegseth’s office and it would be right at home. Your comment almost seals the point that Xi is all the problems of MAGA, except polling China instead.)
Yes, I'm aware how ignorant I may sound, but it's so goddamn frustrating to read this kind of bullshit everytime I come to an American platform.
Ok, China is an autocracy, right? Could you explain to me how China conduct elections? Can you explain to me how they approve laws? Do they have a constitution? A justice system? Try answering these questions without much looking up and even if you do, please note the sources. No need to answer me really. Just ask yourself whether you know this or not and how qualified are you to actually label a HUGE state like China with one single heavily charged word.
Trump has purged dozens of Generals, the head Admiral of the Navy and Coast Guard, head of NSA and Cyber Command and many other top-level officials in the military
and there are only 1,000 women in various special forces (had to pass same physical tests as men) but he is trying to get rid of them all too
The Commander in Chief of the military, also known as the President, has the authority to fire at will, that is how it works in America for 250 years now.
Right, and everyone else has the right to an opinion on it. The point seemingly being made above is Trump's swingeing cuts seem to be driven more by ideology than administrative efficiency. Xi's dismissal of his top general (which seems to be equivalent to sacking the Secretary of Defense or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff) is perplexing due to the opacity, but it doesn't seem to be indicative of any bigger or broader trend.
Theresa though i read somewhere that i tend to agree with - with the level of tech and space experience that China currently is capable of , they could possibly launch a return mission as early as next year(if they so chose).
However they have their own timetable and milestones , hence going to the moon has already been earmarked with followup misson for a lunar base and further missions already penned in.
So less of a race if one party is just doing their own thing.
We see the same dynamic viz Taiwan , western commentariat seeks to impose deadlines and spin rationales when they never materialise. Or the AI race where China keeps churning out OSS models while American labs are in a sel declared 'race' for supremacy.
In the same way Space Race 1.0 kicked the US into putting engineering at the forefront, I look forward to Space Race 2.0. Even if China kicks our (U.S.) ass, I'm be hoping for a sea-change in our attitudes (in fact, the US getting their asses handed to them might be the best medicine we need right now).
TBH pretty retarded to eat up American spacerace 2.0 / rivalry / competition framing when space is like ~0.1% of GDP spend in both US/PRC. At least bump up to half a percent for a proper space race spending. Of course true purpose of framing is likely to keep US space spent at 0.1% instead of 0.01%.
> compete for the best spots
Nothing in outer space treaty that enables first come / first serve squatting. Second mover can always park next door. If anything OST allows joint scientific observation, which allows actors to build right next to each other.
The entire best spot narrative is US trying to bake in landgrab provisions via Artemis Accords (not international/customary law) for safety zones, i.e. landgrab by exclusion - if US build first, someone else can't because it might effect US safety. But reality is non signatories not obliged to honour Artemis. PRC's Artemis, i.e. International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) doesn't have safety zones baked into language yet, but they're going to want to push for some sort of deconfliction as matter of lawfare eventually.
But shit hits fan, and country absolutely need that moon base, everyone who can will be shanty-towning it up in Shackleton, where prime real estate (80-90% illumination windows) are like a few 300m strips. No one is going to settle for shit sloppy seconds because Artemis dictates 2km safety buffer. Exhaust plume from competitor landing next door damage your base? Your fault for not hardening it in first place, building paper mache bases and trying to exclude others under guise of safety is just not going to fly. With all the terrestrial geopolitical implications that entails.
> This space race is different for one core reason: China is more stable than the Soviet Union was in the 1960s.
> If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth.
This is kind of underselling the situation. China is more stable than the U.S. China is also beating the pants off the U.S. in several sectors and in the ones they're not, they're rapidly catching up.
When China beats the U.S. to the Moon, they will also have surpassed the U.S. in several other sectors as well at the same time, all while having a more stable government and continuing to increase the size of their middle class.
> If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth.
The Soviet Union won the "space race" of course (or perhaps Germany did if you define it as suborbital space flight), it just lost the "man on the moon race". In any case, after losing the man on the moon race, the Soviet Union did not just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth. They continued to invest a great deal in their civil, scientific, and military space capabilities after 1969.
Will the Chinese Communist Party similarly collapse in the 2050s? Perhaps not, but they will be going through significant demographic decline from the 2030s; they are increasingly in conflict with the west and with their territorial neighbors; they may become involved in significant military conflicts (e.g., over Taiwan); their current leader has consolidated power and succession could be spicy. So who knows? It's not inconceivable. China would surely continue and continue a space program as Russia has.
You might be being a tad uncharitable to the GP. Competition isn't an inherently bad thing. Many engineering endeavours (and engineers) have been made better by the crucible of competition. The first space race, Formula 1, even the competition between the different experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, for example.
As a historical note, the first President Bush proposed in 1989 to establish a base on the Moon and send astronauts to Mars by 2020. In 2004, the second President Bush set a goal of returning to the Moon by 2020 and going to Mars in the 2030s, starting the Constellation program. In 2017, Trump announced that astronauts would return to the Moon, with the Artemis III project now planning a landing no earlier than 2028.
As a result, I don't have a lot of optimism about a US landing on the Moon. On the other hand, the James Webb Space Telescope did succeed even though the launch date slipped from 2007 to 2021. So I've learned not to be completely pessimistic.
> In 2004, the second President Bush set a goal of returning to the Moon by 2020 and going to Mars in the 2030s, starting the Constellation program. In 2017, Trump announced that astronauts would return to the Moon, with the Artemis III project now planning a landing no earlier than 2028
Between those two the economic effects of invading Iraq came home to roost. We “won” the invasion. But lost the board.
It is interesting to see who will get there first. China seems to be right on target with their schedule, but the US is being more ambitious, this also looks a bit more fragile on execution.
I long suspect Blue Origin will be the first US based to touch down as Starship is just too complicated to get it done in the next 2-3 years, but that doesnt mean even the 2028 landing is assured.
Space exploration had been fairly low key for decades but the last decade has been something to see.
Maybe my date calculations are off, but I think the people that landed on the moon on July 20, 1969 got there first. According to my calculations, if China lands people on the moon in 2030, that will be approximately 61 years later. The people that got there 61 years earlier can be reasonably said to have gotten there first.
Oddly enough, the same country also accomplished the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth landing on the moon by humans. So if all goes well, China can be extremely triumphant with their highly anticipated seventh place trophy.
Neither the current space race nor the cold-war era space race have anything to do with planting a flag in a history book. They are geopolitical dick measuring contests of contemporary power.
The current question isn't "is it possible?", it is "who can pull it off today?"
The people from 61 years ago are either extremely old or dead. Of the other three-quarters of the world population born after December 19, 1972, none have made it there; it will be a first for them.
No I'm poking fun at the defensive reflex of Americans to get very upset at the notion anyone else will go to the moon. Because in context, who will get their first is the relevant question again because no one has the capability anymore.
It was perfectly clear in context that the OP was talking about the new space race where the question is which modern superpower will get there first. It's just hilarious that so many Americans immediately begin talking about how really they got their truly first, in an effort to pretend they couldn't understand and change the question to one which doesn't hurt their ego.
The America which landed on the moon in the 1960s is dead and buried. And the America which said it's going to land on the moon again hasn't done it yet and it's not clear that it can.
I think GP was referring to the fact that the United States is made up of former colonies of Great Britain, but that was such a long time ago, I don't see how it matters for the moon landing.
It’s a neo-leftist international model that divides everyone into colonizer and colonized nations without particular regard for history or reality. The former are bad and powerful. The latter weak and victims.
It offers no predictions, policy prescriptions beyond railing and an infinity of excuses for justifying pretty much anything for the latter and against the former, down to subgroups within each nation.
Correct. Conquered or colonized in 1720 [1]. A century before the British colonized China with almost the same model (small garrison, literal Mandarin in charge). Put another way, the British controlled Hong Kong for longer than China has Tibet.
The coloniser-colonised model works in the New World. It’s silly outside it as a general model. (And it misfires completely when comparing America and China. Both were colonies. Both have colonized and hegemonised.)
Indeed, the 13 colonies that formed the United States in 1776 were a colony of Great Britain up to that point, but what does that have to do with the moon landing? In the 1960s, neither country was a colony of any other country.
But regardless, I will congratulate China wholeheartedly on its 7th place, if and when that happens.
Watch China’s announcements year to year and you’ll see their plans do change. Long March 9 has gone through enough design iterations that I wouldn’t even call it the same rocket anymore
Some people seem to think the previous space race was about technology. That was all incidental. The Space Race was entirely geopolitical. It was a conflict proxy, an artifact of the Cold War. Any technology was entirely incidental.
The US has been talking about a return to the Moon for 50 years. George W Bush talked about it in 2004. It still hasn't happened. Artemis is limping along but it's entirely pork barrelling for the overly expensive SLS program that really no future.
Some might say SpaceX will come to the rescue. That's... doubtful. Notably, Elon calls the Moon "a distraction" [1]. Why would he do this? It's free money from the government.
The answer is actually pretty simple: Tsarship simply isn't designed for this mission type. Landing a Starship on the MOon is much more complex than, say, the LEM for the Apollo missions or the proposed Chinese lunar lander. If you could, your astronats would be 40 meters off the ground. The big advantage of a "traditional" lunar lander is it can't really topple over. Plus the Apollo LEM also had a very simple engine that could only ever be used once but the big advantage was that it was extremely difficult to fail.
If you exclude all that, Starship is behind schedule and still requires developing technology that they haven't even begun to test, most notably in-orbit refueling.
So why is China doing all this? I suspect it's mainly to develop their own reusable rocket program with a side of national pride. China is very concerned with their national security interests. Being able to launch things cheaply is a critical national security interest.
Still, the mission architecture of China's mission (from what I've read) is still fairly complex, requiring two vehicles to rendezvous in lunar orbit. That's also why I think the primary goal is orbital launch capacity.
This space race is different for one core reason: China is more stable than the Soviet Union was in the 1960s.
If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth. They'll keep going, and they have the economic base to expand their program.
I think we're seeing the beginning of a new kind of space race. It's likely to be much longer term and grander in scale over time, as we compete for the best spots on the Moon and the first human landing on Mars in the decades to come.
IMHO the previous race ended because there wasn't that much to be achieved with the technology at hand at that time. They just pivoted to space stations, a space(!) with low hanging fruit.
So if US ends up beating China on this, it will all depend if there's something feasible to do next. I'm under impression that everything done in this new space age so far is just a re-do with the cheaper and better technology. SpaceX reaping that but I am not sure if there's any drastically better capabilities. Can't wait for humans on Mars however I don't expect this to be anything more than vanity project.
You might be right. But a lunar telescope, lunar bases, lunar-orbiting station… Lots still to do within the Earth's sphere of influence.
I’m looking forward for gigantic civilian space stations in Earth and Moon orbit. I think that’s feasible, we aren’t getting interplanetary anytime soon but we can expand to the orbit and our Moon.
> China is more stable than the Soviet Union was in the 1960s
Xi literally just purged “the country’s top military leader, Gen. Zhang Youxia, and an associate, Gen. Liu Zhenli” [1].
This is the mark of a dictator. Not the Soviet Union at its finest.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/us/politics/china-xi-mili...
Did the USSR ever manufacture 80% of the stuff in your house?
> Did the USSR ever manufacture 80% of the stuff in your house?
China makes about a third of the world’s stuff [1]. Soviet Union probably peaked around a fifth, though it might have been as high as a fourth.
China is undoubtedly stronger today, absolutely and relative to the U.S., than the Soviets ever were. But history is littered with self-obsessed autocrats ruining a good thing.
Part of what makes the world today frustrating is both America and China are squandering their advantages in remarkably-similar ways, with each regime’s defenders speaking almost identically.
[1] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/china-worlds-sole-manufacturi...
> China makes about a third of the world’s stuff
That isn't what the commenter asked. What percentage of stuff in your house is made in China? I would be extremely surprised if it's not more than 33%.
> Part of what makes the world today frustrating is both America and China are squandering their advantages in remarkably-similar ways, with each regime’s defenders speaking almost identically.
Personalist rule be personalist. Also glad to see you also appear to recognize our "Wolf Warrior" moment.
If they had manufactured 80% of the stuff in my house, wouldn't Reagan have concluded that they had won the war before it started? A country that manufactures 80% of the things you need to live might just decide to not sell them to you if you misbehave.
Yes, but the real question is if Reagan still would have pushed as hard for financialization and deindustrialization if he understood that he was ultimately selling American industry to communists.
I think he would have. I think he hated American labor more than he hated foreign communists. If his head were still around in a Futurama Jar to comment on the matter, I think he would be blaming American workers for the consequences of his own policies.
Reagan didnt push for deindustrialization and "the world is flat" world view didn't take precedence until after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s.
At the time, everyone was still optimistic that China would eventually become more open and even democratic, that Russia would not regress, etc.
It was still common for electronics and microprocessors to be made in USA well into the 90s. Reagan had nothing to do with the expansion of WTO and trade deficits with China that ballooned under HW, Clinton, Bush Jr and Obama.
You can't have financialization without deindustrialization and he didn't push in that direction, he shoved. This macroeconomic story is 500 years old. He knew what he was doing.
> I think he hated American labor more than he hated foreign communists
Ironic, considering his own history as a union leader.
Yeah but they don't design the stuff
What indication do you have that China doesn't design their own stuff?
They have their own Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, consumer electronics, car companies, aircraft carriers, chip companies, manufacturing, etc.
I agree there is a lot of chaos over there, and numerous challenges. But I don't see China collapsing anytime soon, nothing like the Soviet Union. It's going to be a long-term space race.
> I don't see China collapsing anytime soon, nothing like the Soviet Union
I don’t either. But the Soviet Union’s space programme lost its steam in the 1970s. (Venus was its last ambitious achievement.)
If China gets bogged down in Taiwan because Xi fired every military expert who might disagree with him, that’s going to cost them the space race. (Same as if America decides to replicate the Sino-Soviet split with Europe over Greenland. We can’t afford a competitive space programme at that point.)
If China gets bogged down in Taiwan
The odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil. They could face an insurgency, but there isn't a whole lot of rural Taiwan for insurgents to vanish into and occupying cities is a lot easier absent language and cultural barriers. The could be isolated politically and economically, but realistically China's territorial claim on Taiwan is on far firmer legal and historical ground than many other territorial disputes (eg their control over Tibet).
I don't see the US involving itself directly. What are they going to do, counter-blockade? Start a naval shooting war with a full-on nuclear power on the other side of the world? I don't see Japan backing that either, despite their natural anxiety over the vulnerability of the Ryukyu islands. Support for US bases in Okinawa is ambivalent at best, and while Japan is surely not thrilled about Chinese regional hegemony it's also a reality they've dealt with for thousands of years.
> odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil
The odds of them winding up in a Russia-Ukraine are not nil. (Combined-arms war is hard even without ideological purges.)
America isn’t only outside power investing not only in helping Taiwan fight, but also making any victory pyrrhic. And following that, we’ll see Indian and Japanese containment go into overdrive. (To say nothing of the Philippines or Vietnam.)
I think Xi probably takes Taiwan. But that trades off China’s century of prosperity on economic and diplomatic fronts. That’s the trap the West has been laying, and Xi’s ego and internal constraints almost force him into it.
(Again, if China had showed its pre-Xi patience in the 2010s, we might have seen Taiwan voting to unify right now. Instead he rushed things for personal glory and enrichment.)
I really don't agree on the Russia-Ukraine comparison; I just can't see where the Taiwanese strategic depth is supposed to come from. In an earlier era it would have been feasible to conduct and insurgency from mountainous redoubts and infiltration around ports, but I really can't see that happening with a 21st century urbanized population, in the same way that Russia's strategic problem in Ukraine is the ability to maintain/grow it's front, rather than difficulty sustaining its gains in the rear. However I've never been there so I'm sure I'm overlooking ground factors that might make a big difference.
I agree with you about Xi's impatience but I think you're overestimating the political and economic fallout in the same way that people overestimated the ramifications of China retaking and consolidating its control of Hong Kong. The latter is definitely not politically free in the way it used to be but nor has it fallen into decline or dystopia.
> The odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil.
Exactly. Everyone keeps acting like it's 50 years ago. China has the world's largest navy and the largest navy almost always wins. They also have a home court advantage. Anyone trying to militarily protect Taiwan would either get the pants beat off of them or suffer starting a world war.
> If China gets bogged down in Taiwan...
Look at the geography. Taiwan is a long, narrow island. All the important parts are in a narrow plain on the west side, facing China. There's only about 20km of depth from the sea.
The war in Ukraine is like fighting over Iowa, one farm at a time. Taiwan is not like that.
> There's only about 20km of depth from the sea
Don’t underestimate the stopping power of water. Taiwan will be China’s first combined-arms assault with a critical amphibious component.
> war in Ukraine is like fighting over Iowa, one farm at a time. Taiwan is not like that
Wide-open plains are traditionally easier for large armies to conquer than mountains.
Although I agree the space program lost steam, I'd still count the Mir space station (1985) and Buran space shuttle (1988) to both be ambitious achievements.
> I'd still count the Mir space station (1985) and Buran space shuttle (1988) to both be ambitious achievements
Mir yes. Buran was an ambitious project but not achievement.
I would rate this as an achievement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)#Orbital_fli...
Fair enough. If the Saturn V is an achievement so was Buran.
> because Xi fired every military expert who might disagree with him
Are they being fired for disagreeing with him, or for misconduct.
I mean its hard to tell the difference from a western country, but "Zhang was put under investigation for allegedly forming political cliques, promoting Li Shangfu as defense minister in exchange for large bribes, and leaking core technical data on China's nuclear weapons to the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Youxia
Seems fairly reasonable. Like the US Military would act in the exact same way, if those circumstances are correct.
There's a question as to whether China's surplus capability is enough to overflow the deprivation that a space program might suffer in a chaos Taiwan scenario.
Their resources and capabilities are obviously substantial and sustained (not going anywhere). The USSR had only a few patches of sustained serious economic output, the rest of the time was rolling from one disaster to another, one deprivation after another.
It seems entirely plausible that China getting bogged down in Taiwan wouldn't be enough to deprive them of a run to the Moon. The US was able to sustain NASA during Iraq-Afghanistan, and go to the Moon during the Vietnam War (plus cultural chaos).
That said, China isn't going to get bogged down in Taiwan. It's going to unfortunately be easier than most are imagining. China will ultimately regret not moving on the island sooner when they see how easy it's going to be to take it and how weak the US response will be (the US can't sustain a stand-off with China in that region for more than a few weeks before folding, unless it's willing to go to full war mode economically (which it's not)).
> seems entirely plausible that China getting bogged down in Taiwan wouldn't be enough to deprive them of a run to the Moon. The US was able to sustain NASA during Iraq-Afghanistan
We probably lost basing on the Moon because Bush went into Iraq.
China getting bogged down in Taiwan means more political repression, more restiveness in Xinjiang and—if New Delhi isn’t totally stupid—needing to prop up Pakistan and its strategic fronts in the Himalayas. It also almost certainly means demand destruction in Europe, the EU and ASEAN.
> China isn't going to get bogged down in Taiwan. It's going to unfortunately be easier than most are imagining
The same people saying this today had hot takes on Kyiv falling in ‘21.
China invading Taiwan demilitarized Japan and India. It fundamentally changes its doorstep in ways that incur costs. To the Soviets, Afghanistan. To America, Iraq and possibly Greenland. To China, Taiwan.
(And let’s be clear: this is a vanity project for Xi. Taiwan would have voted, eventually, to peacefully join China if pre-Xi trends continued. But he needed it on his watch. Hence the stupidity.)
> And let’s be clear: this is a vanity project for Xi. Taiwan would have voted, eventually, to peacefully join China if pre-Xi trends continued. But he needed it on his watch. Hence the stupidity.
From what I've been hearing from my buddies still in the NatSec space what matters at this point is the 2028 Taiwanese Election and maybe the 2028 Philippines Election. If neither see a definitive victory for either side in 2028, it gives a face saving off-ramp for the Xi admin to argue they brought the "Taiwan Problem" back on track to the pre-2014 status quo. Of course they could be closeted KMT/TPP supporters but most delivery roadmap's I've been hearing align with a 2028 date.
>The same people saying this today had hot takes on Kyiv falling in ‘21.
Please note that Kiev not falling after a week in '22 (assuming you misspelled) was pure luck. Russians had extreme advantage in man and firepower. They made a big mistake by using their army against their doctrine - not bombing/shelling targets before attacking (what Russian army was designed for).
But them losing the war (at least the first week) is due to a few lucky dice rolls for us. Us both Europe, but also for me as a Polish expat, knowing my brothers and friends are not dying right now fighting Russian army with all the Ukrainians conscripted into it.
These lucky dice rolls that I can come up from memory: 1. Shooting down one of two military passenger planes with russian Seals that were to take Kiev's Hostomel airport and open an air bridge. The group from the plane that survived did take the airfields, but they couldn't decide on their own to move and take the airports buildings - no distributed command in Russia at that point. Thanks to that, local territorial defence managed to easily kill these elite forces. 2. Fast and generous support from England in form of Javelins that limited Russian heavy equipment advantage. Sorry if I don't credit the countries involved correctly. 3. Fast and generous aid with post soviet equipment from old Warsaw pact countries. These tanks could be used right away as they required no re-training. 4. General incompetence and duty negligence that was systemic in Soviets and is still systemic in Russia. To that we owe cars running out of fuel, or having their tires pop, because, against orders to regularly move them, they all sat with sun damaging one side of the tire so many years, while the responsible for maintenance were drinking vodka and eating pierogi with kielbasa.
> pure luck
this is actually skill, bravery, and fortitude
Putin ignored his army and tasked the FSB with the project. He fundamentally got fucked by putting loyalty ahead of merit. It’s what Hegseth is doing in America and now Xi, again, in China.
There's a better article about it in the WSJ of all places https://archive.is/48m3F
Missing from both is that Zhang Youxia was the last senior PLA leader to have seen frontline action in the Sino-Vietnamese war.
Vietnam frontline experience is irrelevant in 2026, when its more drone dominated.
Im sure China has plenty of observers/volunteers embedded at the Russian side in the SMO making plenty of notes, reports, and get modern warfare experience..
All frontline experience is valuable. It reminds the leader that in war, real people, people on your own side, people that you know, people that you will miss, will die.
and in this case the particulars match the archetype: my understanding is that Zhang was the "dove" while Xi is the "hawk." The hawk just ate the dove. We're going to war.
Xi appointed himself president for life in 2018, almost six years ago. China wasnt exactly a bastion of liberal democracy before then either. Sacking a top general is basically par for the course.
> Sacking a top general is basically par for the course
Yes and no. Military readiness and potency doesn’t require liberal democracy. It does require skill and command, and sacking military leaders for political reasons is how powers from Athens to the Soviets screwed themselves.
Yeah but the question of stability was relative to the Soviets. The US has a good amount of instability as well, and has been hemorrhaging scientists lately.
So if the argument is that sacking a top general implies that China is too unstable to prevail in a future space race I don’t buy it.
Except generals get sacked all the time in actual wartime conditions, it's not even clear why this particular instance is notable.
China isn't in wartime, it is in a build up phase and there's perfectly good reasons to dismiss underperforming generals.
Which isn't to say that's what happened here, but China sacking a general as a data point doesn't mean anything without appropriate context.
Which means China is indeed very stable at least when Xi is alive.
Our dear leader just purged the Pentagon and other hallowed agencies, what does that make us?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/latest-purge-hegseth-remove...
Very close to a dictatorship. It will be one if the midterms are not allowed to proceed fairly.
> what does that make us?
More vulnerable. More brittle. Not stable.
Purge seems like a strong word from what I just read. There definitely seems to be actual and power plays going on on his side. It's not exactly because he was out there doing the best for people.
But how is this less stable than even the United States now? Trump has literally purged nearly every single person leading federal agencies and institutions, including law enforcement. He also effectively stacked the Supreme Court with the help of Mitch McConnell, cheating the system to do his bidding.
This is the same trite bullshit we’ve been hearing for decades. Look at where China is today.
Keep in mind that China is not where it is today because of Xi. He could take it further for sure but so can he press the wrong buttons. It remains to be seen how China fares in the next few decades.
He's doing a better job than Zhao Ziyang, that's for sure.
Yep, China was on a massive and insane growth trajectory prior to Xi. Xi's policies and constant banging of war drums at Taiwan's door has cost China massively in terms of foreign investment and even knowledge transfer opportunities (by the ever-gullible West).
> the same trite bullshit we’ve been hearing for decades
Nope. It isn’t. Xi has ruled China like a dictator that breaks the tradition of intraparty competition the CCP has had since Mao.
When Xi ended his Wolf Warrior nonsense it seemed to signal a reset. Now we have this nonsense.
> Look at where China is today
Look at where America is today. Both are richer than they’ve ever been. More militarily potent than ever. Both are growing their economies, militaries and territorial ambitions. Both have serious issues, including the gerontocratic oligarchic consolidation of power at the expense of national interests.
> Look at where America is today. Both are richer than they’ve ever been. More militarily potent than ever.
just don't look at the first derivative vs china
The argument is the reflexive defensiveness works-and is raised—in both cases. Premature declarations of victory have never been a historic sign of strength.
Not that I disagree, but I’m curious how you define national interests.
> curious how you define national interests
My metric would be what the country’s population today and weighted populations of the future, if they could weigh in, would choose.
It’s possible to frame ex post facto and impossible to pin down in the present. And it’s inherently subjective and culturally relative. But it’s useful to reason with, including for finding patterns in history.
One pattern is the cost of corruption. If a leader is making billions off their power, they’re putting person about polity. That’s currently true in America [1] and China [2][3]. The difference is America has a chance to fix that in ‘28. China used to rotate leaders. But Xi fucked that up. (Note the language similarity between the above comment and how MAGA defends itself. “Trite bullshit.” Beijing has a hidden MACA problem, it’s just had a tougher time dealing with it because Xi reveres Mao.)
[1] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/spy-sheikh-secret-stake-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/asia/chinas-preside...
[3] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/mar/20/us-intel-sa...
Can’t weighted population of the future change based on what is chosen? For example by immigration and deportations?
Also is MACA actually MCGA? Or something else? Aren’t there similar trends also in Europe and India?
The question is rather: Where could China have been today if it started opening up decades earlier?
> Where could China have been today if it started opening up decades earlier?
Or without Mao being a trash fire of a leader. (Flip side: where would they be without Deng or Zemin, or others in the CCP who put nation above personal interest? The folks Xi is killing because they threaten his personal interests.)
Maybe the combination of capitalism + democracy is so successful because it aligns the incentives of leaders and the masses best (to the extent possible).
My takeaway from China is democracy is less important than political competition. Between Mao and Xi, the CCP had the latter without the former. Today, America has the former and is struggling to keep the latter.
Yes agreed. But competition for what?
I'd say for the good of the majority of the people.
In other systems only those on top profit (maybe 10-20% max) even if they claim otherwise.
Thus democracy, through competition, aligns the leader's incentive with their people best.
I think not. European colonialism was hardly a democratic project, and the extreme success of the US is attributable less to ideology and more to being an entire continent with a relatively tiny indigenous population that had not exploited any of its natural resources. Ideological/paradigmatic competition is not some neat controlled experiment where you can normalize existing conditions to unity and then draw conclusions from measuring subsequent growth; initial resource distributions make a massive difference and geography, while not the only factor, is highly determinative.
China had fallen behind long before Mao, after being among the most powerful and advanced nations for most of recorded history. It appears to now be stepping back into that familiar role.
Neither China or the West handled the transition to industrial civilization well. A key difference is that most Chinese died due to incompetence on the part of their leaders, but in the west they mostly murdered one another on purpose.
Once again a Nazi is in charge of the western world's most advanced rocket program.
It's amazing. The American president is quite literally creating a parallel military force to jail and kill people on the streets, they're arresting opposing journalists, politicians, pressuring tv channels and news organizations to fire people, invading countries without congressional approval, threatening allies with annexation for no fucking reason, dismantling any social programs left, and all of that led by a proven pedophile billionaire that was the customer and friend of a huge human trafficker, as were most of his billionaire friends who he favors with absolutely no shame.
And this is just the latest news coming from over there. I won't mention the fact that there are people alive today who couldn't drink from the same fountain as other people because their skin is dark. It was never fucking great.
So if you are American and still talk all this shit about China being a dictatorship and authoritarian this and “purge” that, I wish you would honestly shut the fuck up. Really. You are in no position to have an informed opinion on this because all of your information is force fed down your throat by half a dozen mega companies that are in bed with your regime.
So yeah, I'm sure China has a lot of issues, but if you didn't live there for some time or even speak the language for that matter, just shut the fuck the up.
No. I didn’t vote for that, and I’m not going to meekly give up on talking shit about the US and other countries. This idea that you have to be perfect to comment on anything imperfect needs to die.
The US is not an autocracy, is a mix between a plutocracy and a gerontocracy.
> if you are American and still talk all this shit about China being a dictatorship and authoritarian this and “purge” that, I wish you would honestly shut the fuck up. Really. You are in no position to have an informed opinion on this because all of your information is force fed
Bit defensive there, eh?
China is an autocracy and Xi is acting in the predictably self-destructive ways a dictator does. The U.S. is heading down that same path, with Trump practically mimicking Xi. N = 2 doesn’t weaken an argument. And folks who lived through the Nazis saying they see similar veins today doesn’t undermine their credibility.
(The hilarity of it is if you take your comment and replace China and America with partisan or pro-American coding, you could pop it out of Hegseth’s office and it would be right at home. Your comment almost seals the point that Xi is all the problems of MAGA, except polling China instead.)
Yes, I'm aware how ignorant I may sound, but it's so goddamn frustrating to read this kind of bullshit everytime I come to an American platform.
Ok, China is an autocracy, right? Could you explain to me how China conduct elections? Can you explain to me how they approve laws? Do they have a constitution? A justice system? Try answering these questions without much looking up and even if you do, please note the sources. No need to answer me really. Just ask yourself whether you know this or not and how qualified are you to actually label a HUGE state like China with one single heavily charged word.
btw just for comparison over in the US
Trump has purged dozens of Generals, the head Admiral of the Navy and Coast Guard, head of NSA and Cyber Command and many other top-level officials in the military
and there are only 1,000 women in various special forces (had to pass same physical tests as men) but he is trying to get rid of them all too
Now that is the mark of dictator, agreed
The Commander in Chief of the military, also known as the President, has the authority to fire at will, that is how it works in America for 250 years now.
Right, and everyone else has the right to an opinion on it. The point seemingly being made above is Trump's swingeing cuts seem to be driven more by ideology than administrative efficiency. Xi's dismissal of his top general (which seems to be equivalent to sacking the Secretary of Defense or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff) is perplexing due to the opacity, but it doesn't seem to be indicative of any bigger or broader trend.
Guess it works that way in China too...
Trump was elected by the people of the United States. Twice. Soundly. Not a dictator.
Xi was never elected to his position by the people of China.
Being a bad president isn't the same thing as being a dictator.
> Trump was elected by the people of the United States. Twice. Soundly. Not a dictator
Trump is not a dictator, but not because he was elected, but because of our courts and federal system (and theoretically Congress).
Theresa though i read somewhere that i tend to agree with - with the level of tech and space experience that China currently is capable of , they could possibly launch a return mission as early as next year(if they so chose).
However they have their own timetable and milestones , hence going to the moon has already been earmarked with followup misson for a lunar base and further missions already penned in. So less of a race if one party is just doing their own thing.
We see the same dynamic viz Taiwan , western commentariat seeks to impose deadlines and spin rationales when they never materialise. Or the AI race where China keeps churning out OSS models while American labs are in a sel declared 'race' for supremacy.
In the same way Space Race 1.0 kicked the US into putting engineering at the forefront, I look forward to Space Race 2.0. Even if China kicks our (U.S.) ass, I'm be hoping for a sea-change in our attitudes (in fact, the US getting their asses handed to them might be the best medicine we need right now).
(Why do I use the word ass so often?)
TBH pretty retarded to eat up American spacerace 2.0 / rivalry / competition framing when space is like ~0.1% of GDP spend in both US/PRC. At least bump up to half a percent for a proper space race spending. Of course true purpose of framing is likely to keep US space spent at 0.1% instead of 0.01%.
> compete for the best spots
Nothing in outer space treaty that enables first come / first serve squatting. Second mover can always park next door. If anything OST allows joint scientific observation, which allows actors to build right next to each other.
The entire best spot narrative is US trying to bake in landgrab provisions via Artemis Accords (not international/customary law) for safety zones, i.e. landgrab by exclusion - if US build first, someone else can't because it might effect US safety. But reality is non signatories not obliged to honour Artemis. PRC's Artemis, i.e. International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) doesn't have safety zones baked into language yet, but they're going to want to push for some sort of deconfliction as matter of lawfare eventually.
But shit hits fan, and country absolutely need that moon base, everyone who can will be shanty-towning it up in Shackleton, where prime real estate (80-90% illumination windows) are like a few 300m strips. No one is going to settle for shit sloppy seconds because Artemis dictates 2km safety buffer. Exhaust plume from competitor landing next door damage your base? Your fault for not hardening it in first place, building paper mache bases and trying to exclude others under guise of safety is just not going to fly. With all the terrestrial geopolitical implications that entails.
"Nothing in outer space treaty that enables first come / first serve squatting. Second mover can always park next door."
Antarctica then. (That's fine.)
Do we already know what the best spots on the Moon are or will that be determined by the early missions doing survey?
Yes to both I'd say. The south polar region will be contested because of the presence of water-ice and abundant sunlight.
> This space race is different for one core reason: China is more stable than the Soviet Union was in the 1960s.
> If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth.
This is kind of underselling the situation. China is more stable than the U.S. China is also beating the pants off the U.S. in several sectors and in the ones they're not, they're rapidly catching up.
When China beats the U.S. to the Moon, they will also have surpassed the U.S. in several other sectors as well at the same time, all while having a more stable government and continuing to increase the size of their middle class.
The US landed on the moon in the 1960s. "Beating to the moon" isn't how I'd call this.
> If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth.
The Soviet Union won the "space race" of course (or perhaps Germany did if you define it as suborbital space flight), it just lost the "man on the moon race". In any case, after losing the man on the moon race, the Soviet Union did not just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth. They continued to invest a great deal in their civil, scientific, and military space capabilities after 1969.
Will the Chinese Communist Party similarly collapse in the 2050s? Perhaps not, but they will be going through significant demographic decline from the 2030s; they are increasingly in conflict with the west and with their territorial neighbors; they may become involved in significant military conflicts (e.g., over Taiwan); their current leader has consolidated power and succession could be spicy. So who knows? It's not inconceivable. China would surely continue and continue a space program as Russia has.
>If we beat the Chinese somehow
What a horrible attitude.
You might be being a tad uncharitable to the GP. Competition isn't an inherently bad thing. Many engineering endeavours (and engineers) have been made better by the crucible of competition. The first space race, Formula 1, even the competition between the different experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, for example.
Is there a good, consolidated technical description of their mission architecture?
(Apparently Artemis II is now pushed off the March [1]. Alongside Starship’s next scheduled launch [2].)
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/02/03/nasa-conducts...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starship_launches
As a historical note, the first President Bush proposed in 1989 to establish a base on the Moon and send astronauts to Mars by 2020. In 2004, the second President Bush set a goal of returning to the Moon by 2020 and going to Mars in the 2030s, starting the Constellation program. In 2017, Trump announced that astronauts would return to the Moon, with the Artemis III project now planning a landing no earlier than 2028.
As a result, I don't have a lot of optimism about a US landing on the Moon. On the other hand, the James Webb Space Telescope did succeed even though the launch date slipped from 2007 to 2021. So I've learned not to be completely pessimistic.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/12/us/bush-sets-target-for-m... https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/us/bush-backs-goal-of-fli... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program
> In 2004, the second President Bush set a goal of returning to the Moon by 2020 and going to Mars in the 2030s, starting the Constellation program. In 2017, Trump announced that astronauts would return to the Moon, with the Artemis III project now planning a landing no earlier than 2028
Between those two the economic effects of invading Iraq came home to roost. We “won” the invasion. But lost the board.
Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/2014/
It is interesting to see who will get there first. China seems to be right on target with their schedule, but the US is being more ambitious, this also looks a bit more fragile on execution.
I long suspect Blue Origin will be the first US based to touch down as Starship is just too complicated to get it done in the next 2-3 years, but that doesnt mean even the 2028 landing is assured.
Space exploration had been fairly low key for decades but the last decade has been something to see.
Maybe my date calculations are off, but I think the people that landed on the moon on July 20, 1969 got there first. According to my calculations, if China lands people on the moon in 2030, that will be approximately 61 years later. The people that got there 61 years earlier can be reasonably said to have gotten there first.
Oddly enough, the same country also accomplished the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth landing on the moon by humans. So if all goes well, China can be extremely triumphant with their highly anticipated seventh place trophy.
Neither the current space race nor the cold-war era space race have anything to do with planting a flag in a history book. They are geopolitical dick measuring contests of contemporary power.
The current question isn't "is it possible?", it is "who can pull it off today?"
The people from 61 years ago are either extremely old or dead. Of the other three-quarters of the world population born after December 19, 1972, none have made it there; it will be a first for them.
Kinda deliberately missing the point there, but go off.
And as we all know, successful enterprises are always the ones which do something once and then never again for 61 years. /S
They did it 5 more times. Are the goalposts moving so that you have to do something 7 times before it counts?
They stopped doing more moon missions in the 70s because people lost interest very quickly and nobody cared anymore.
No I'm poking fun at the defensive reflex of Americans to get very upset at the notion anyone else will go to the moon. Because in context, who will get their first is the relevant question again because no one has the capability anymore.
It was perfectly clear in context that the OP was talking about the new space race where the question is which modern superpower will get there first. It's just hilarious that so many Americans immediately begin talking about how really they got their truly first, in an effort to pretend they couldn't understand and change the question to one which doesn't hurt their ego.
The America which landed on the moon in the 1960s is dead and buried. And the America which said it's going to land on the moon again hasn't done it yet and it's not clear that it can.
One was coloniser and another one was a colony. That's why 61y gap
> One was coloniser and another one was a colony
This is an America-centric geopolitical model with zero predictive power.
China annexed Tibet in 1951 [1]. Xinjiang has been fighting colonization from the Qings, Soviets, Nationalists and PRC for over a century.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_China
I think GP was referring to the fact that the United States is made up of former colonies of Great Britain, but that was such a long time ago, I don't see how it matters for the moon landing.
It’s a neo-leftist international model that divides everyone into colonizer and colonized nations without particular regard for history or reality. The former are bad and powerful. The latter weak and victims.
It offers no predictions, policy prescriptions beyond railing and an infinity of excuses for justifying pretty much anything for the latter and against the former, down to subgroups within each nation.
It was part of China since 1720, it briefly declared independence in 1913 but that was recognised by no foreign nation [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet
Correct. Conquered or colonized in 1720 [1]. A century before the British colonized China with almost the same model (small garrison, literal Mandarin in charge). Put another way, the British controlled Hong Kong for longer than China has Tibet.
The coloniser-colonised model works in the New World. It’s silly outside it as a general model. (And it misfires completely when comparing America and China. Both were colonies. Both have colonized and hegemonised.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_expedition_to_Tibet_(1...
Indeed, the 13 colonies that formed the United States in 1776 were a colony of Great Britain up to that point, but what does that have to do with the moon landing? In the 1960s, neither country was a colony of any other country.
But regardless, I will congratulate China wholeheartedly on its 7th place, if and when that happens.
Based
Are you talking about Mars? Moon happened a while back.
Mars is Elon Musk fantasy. Manned missions to Mars are extremely dangerous and pointless at this time.
Guess what, manned missions to Moons are extremely pointless at this time too.
Watch China’s announcements year to year and you’ll see their plans do change. Long March 9 has gone through enough design iterations that I wouldn’t even call it the same rocket anymore
Some people seem to think the previous space race was about technology. That was all incidental. The Space Race was entirely geopolitical. It was a conflict proxy, an artifact of the Cold War. Any technology was entirely incidental.
The US has been talking about a return to the Moon for 50 years. George W Bush talked about it in 2004. It still hasn't happened. Artemis is limping along but it's entirely pork barrelling for the overly expensive SLS program that really no future.
Some might say SpaceX will come to the rescue. That's... doubtful. Notably, Elon calls the Moon "a distraction" [1]. Why would he do this? It's free money from the government.
The answer is actually pretty simple: Tsarship simply isn't designed for this mission type. Landing a Starship on the MOon is much more complex than, say, the LEM for the Apollo missions or the proposed Chinese lunar lander. If you could, your astronats would be 40 meters off the ground. The big advantage of a "traditional" lunar lander is it can't really topple over. Plus the Apollo LEM also had a very simple engine that could only ever be used once but the big advantage was that it was extremely difficult to fail.
If you exclude all that, Starship is behind schedule and still requires developing technology that they haven't even begun to test, most notably in-orbit refueling.
So why is China doing all this? I suspect it's mainly to develop their own reusable rocket program with a side of national pride. China is very concerned with their national security interests. Being able to launch things cheaply is a critical national security interest.
Still, the mission architecture of China's mission (from what I've read) is still fairly complex, requiring two vehicles to rendezvous in lunar orbit. That's also why I think the primary goal is orbital launch capacity.
[1]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1875023335891026324
If another space race is what it takes, then I welcome it.