I remember watching every launch from Project Mercury to the last Shuttle. The Jupiter 2 was supposed to take off for Alpha Centauri in 1998. I thought is was possible when we landed on the moon that the technology would be there. I guess we can watch the Chinese land on Mars with the next wave of technology on our iPads.
I guess we can watch the Chinese land on Mars with the next wave of technology on our iPads.
China has made three manned space flights and hasn't flown since 2008. They have yet to do rendezvous and docking, something that we did during the Gemini era. You aren't going to the moon much less mars without rendezvous and docking.
They also need a new booster. The Long March rocket is maxed out with the Shenzhou spacecraft. So they are in essence in the same place we are. They aren't going to the moon with anything they can put on a launchpad today. And they take almost as long as NASA to develop a new booster. To be blunt the Chinese space program is still 40 years behind us, although it is making progress while we are standing still, and as such will catch up.
The wild card is commercial space. The Falcon/Dragon-9 could fly crew within a very short period of time. The Falcon-9 Heavy cold easily throw enough mass for a moon shot. And the Mars Society put out a paper showing that given six launches the Falcon-9 Heavy could put enough mass on orbit for a bare bones Mars shot using Bigelow Aerospace inflateable habitation modules. And even the Chinese admit that can't come close to SpaceX in terms of cost per kilo to orbit (reference
WHY THE US CAN BEAT CHINA: THE FACTS ABOUT SPACEX COSTS).
The US is in a bad place so far as space exploration is concerned. But the Russians are just as broke and the Chinese are way behind. And if their economy craters (as it appears likely to) they won't be doing a Moon in a decade stunt the way we did back in the 60s.