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How big would their version of our Lunar Module be? With the legs folded, our LM was a sizable spacecraft. It filled the SLA on top of the Saturn V S-IVB. Currently, China doesn’t have a launch vehicle that could lift a similar spacecraft. Even a scaled down LM would be puching the booster capability. They would then need a seperate launch for the crew. Seems that they have a long way to go before they can even think of traipsing out where we’ve already been.

Heck with that. I bet they use a multi-vehicle launch. One carries the command module, the other the lunar module. With a little planning, you can bring more mass and more fuel and land a bigger team.

How big would their version of our Lunar Module be? With the legs folded, our LM was a sizable spacecraft. It filled the SLA on top of the Saturn V S-IVB. Currently, China doesn’t have a launch vehicle that could lift a similar spacecraft. Even a scaled down LM would be puching the booster capability. They would then need a seperate launch for the crew. Seems that they have a long way to go before they can even think of traipsing out where we’ve already been.

They are working their way up in launch capabilities, but nobody ever said they had to do everything in one launch. They could easily put the required vehicles into orbit in multiple launches - that was one of our early plans. Spreading the parts needed for a Lunar mission over 2-3 launches would allow them to do a lot more and stay a lot longer.

If we hadn't stopped, we had plans for putting habitats on the moon through unmanned missions. Hell, we even landed one of the Apollos near a previous probe that had been landed. It would be even easier these days to land there. They wouldn't have the computer problems Apollo 11 had when Buzz turned on the rendezvous radar during the landing and crashed the computer.