Can you imagine being a police officer in China??
“ can you give me a description of the man who stole your purse?”
Victim:” Yes, he was short, with brown eyes and black short hair. He was humorless, like an autistic robot.”
Um, I thought we went to the moon, multiple times??
Why with all our increased technology, is it sooooo hard to get back??
interesting?
Who cares if China beats us to the moon. Starship by SpaceX is a next generation vehicle and a paradigm shift.
Let them.
Ever dollar they spend getting to the Moon, is a dollar they won’t be spending on military build-up or terrorist assisting...............
Why are we racing China to the moon? Do something new. Build infrastructure on the moon. Use robots to do it.
Space X Starship Stack has a cargo weight to LEO of about the same as the mission weight at the time of Trans Lunar Injection. 107,000 pounds (\(~48,500\) kg) for Apollo 17. SpaceX is buitling the starship program with a target of LEO, what NASA wants to fund beyond that has been sitting since 2018 as a question. Grumman took 6 and half years to finalize the lander design, weight, power, safety factors in coordination with NASA and less than 19 months to build flight copies.
Nasa has concentrated all its efforts on heavy lift and has waffled on a lunar station, lunar lander, lunar long-term and exactly other than personal they want to return from the moons surface. Congress needs to issue what they want so both parties are happy with the deliveries past 2029.
Who. Cares. We’ve been there.
1st off who gives a s....
Robots don’t need to breath. Imagine factories on the Moon making all kinds of things, including more factories. It has the potential to dwarf the Industrial Revolution. At the Lunar poles there is frozen ice . Probably the most important real estate in the Solar System. Water for anybody we send up there and rocket fuel for exploiting the rest of the Solar System.
Since the Chicoms have never “been to the moon” they are not in a race to get “back to the moon.” We have been there, done that.
There are 4 companies trying to build future Space Stations. Some private.
As far as the current NASA insanity, would you believe the next manned mission is to orbit the moon and return. The insanity is that the Orion capsule life support system has not been tested in space. Yes, you read this correctly. Also, the heat shield for the return through the Earth’s atmosphere has major issues. I cannot decide if the humans on that flight are brave or foolish.
Today’s SpaceX Starship / SuperHeavy Booster test will test various re-entry tiles, as well as the stainless steel body of the Starship, and many other systems. SpaceX purposefully stresses these systems to find out what works, what doesn’t work, etc.
The first time was purely for bragging rights. This time’s for keeps. We’re all going back to the moon with a look to exploiting and/or colonizing it, and the first one to get there gets to claim the best real estate.
The Chinese in particular wouldn’t be doing this without an eye on a long-term strategic goal.
Why can’t they just dust off blueprints from Apollo?
A spacesuit problem? That definitly does not add up.
Guess the push has been started for more funding.
Put Musk on it, with USAID funding stolen back from left wing causes.