After recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/08/after-recent-tests-china-appears-likely-to-beat-the-united-states-back-to-the-moon/
After recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/08/after-recent-tests-china-appears-likely-to-beat-the-united-states-back-to-the-moon/
31 Comments
Not at all unexpected considering that China is most likely funding and supporting its space program as opposed to the gutting of NASA that the current government is doing.
edit-spelling
It is hard to tell how this will end up, China does not publish a timeline and the US is constantly delayed.
US has an advantage in the Launch vehicles and Orion had two test flights.
Starship is Starship, Blue moon pathfinder was delayed to early 2026 and Orion has various problems.
At least when China lands on the moon it will hopefully spur the US to support NASA and student visas for STEM fields and stop the attack on public funding and maybe we can win the race to mars. Nothing is as important as science funding and the amount we learn from it pays dividends for generations.
The issue is that Starship HLS is nowhere near ready to get people to the moon.
I’m really not a fan of the USA, but the Moon has already been won while China barely had electricity.
Edit: wow the Chinese bot farm is really working hard to down vote this comment!
It would be nice if we saw more cooperation!
Reaching an early space stage would progress much faster if it wasn’t treated like a competition of “X beats Y in space”
Started watching For All Mankind recently, interesting how the current situation feels like the initial “Race for the Base” stage, especially with the interest around Shackleton Crater.
Regardless, unless a US lander exits the CGI mockup phase and the launch system gets developed then the first manned revisit will be Chinese. No way around it at this point.
I just hope that when the USA/West gets back to the moon they are there to stay. We’ve proved we can get there, we did over 50 years ago, dammit. Now I hope we prove we’re in it for the long haul.
We only had a 60-year lead. Talk about dropping the ball.
With Trump in charge, I expect China will beating us at everything except looking like a country of greedy, racist, fools.
Well now? For sure. NASA got gutted. Trump and musk screwed them out of it happening.
Gonna be interesting to see how our lander does on Monday.
Im actually hoping china lands more people on the moon.why?
Because Donald Trump is such an ignorant buffoon that absolutely hates losing, that he will dump tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into our space program just to beat the Chinese. It will be a repeat of the US vs Russia space program that happened in the 60s and 70s.
Out of this new space race, we will receive trillions of dollars of innovation that we can use here on earth. Including lower cost space travel, more exotic materials that can survive harsher environments, better food store technologies, and other forms of alternative energy. Like the MRNA vaccine, it will be a form of forced innovation That will move all of humanity further. No matter your nationality.
Not surprising. Capitalism inevitably gets in its own way when it comes to innovation. This is because capitalism will always look for corners to cut costs. And that decreases quality. At the same time they are also looking at every way to make more profit. And that increases the price tag on tax payers. In short, capitalism will always give as little as possible while charging as much as possible. And that is why capitalism inevitably stunts scientific and social innovation.
Meanwhile, socialism does the opposite. It puts a focus on what will help the society more. Thus, less corners cut and less inflation on costs to the tax payers. In other words, they try to get as much as they can for as little cost. This will inevitably drive and fund innovative approaches over profitable ones.
Get used to it…
The United States ain’t what it used to be.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[CNSA](/r/Space/comments/1mtstzn/stub/n9e146f “Last usage”)|Chinese National Space Administration|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1mtstzn/stub/n9e5wi2 “Last usage”)|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[LLO](/r/Space/comments/1mtstzn/stub/n9edqv9 “Last usage”)|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)|
|[NET](/r/Space/comments/1mtstzn/stub/n9eannm “Last usage”)|No Earlier Than|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1mtstzn/stub/n9ef2c1 “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1mtstzn/stub/n9eeeic “Last usage”)|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family)) under development by SpaceX|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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^(6 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1ms9zd4)^( has 14 acronyms.)
^([Thread #11616 for this sub, first seen 18th Aug 2025, 18:43])
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We’ve become such a weak country. Cutting funding into cutting-edge science and research, turning us into the laughing stock of the science and tech communities.
The Long March 10 has zero launches. They don’t know if the rocket works. The actual schedule is highly dependent on China launching the Long March 10 multiple times. Until they launch the Long March 10, we don’t know if the design is actually going to work. The Long March 10 is several times larger than any orbital rocket that China has launched before. It’s also a very different design, with three seven-engine rocket stages, more reminiscent of the Falcon Heavy.
It’s easy to pretend that a design is on schedule, as long as you aren’t actually doing launches. The SLS and Starship rockets have both launched at least once. There have been delays. We know that Starship has quality control issues, partially because it has done actual launches.
Well, not surprising when every US President for the past two+ decades has drastically re-structured the country’s vision and path forward in space, while at the same time tolerating a culture of “it will happen when it happens” at NASA and refusing to hold contractors to their claims about budget and timelines.
America is currently lead by donald trump. That’s kinda all you need to know.
China is going to eat the US’s lunch for the foreseeable future thanks to the maga/doge wankathon.
They only went there to beat the Russian’s, so there’s a good chance they will get all panicky once China goes there and hopefully ups investment.
This is great news. When China achieves technological superiority in space and America will freak and create next-level space technology.
Good, not like we’ll ever get there or do anything great in space ever again
100% especially with Trump in charge. USA can’t plan for anything with him around. USA is so weak under Trump.
“Cheng: On paper, the US has most of the advantages. We have a larger economy, more experience in space, extant space industrial capacity for reusable space launch, etc. But we have not had programmatic stability so that we are consistently pursuing the same goal over time. During Trump-1, the US said it would go to the Moon with people by 2024. Here we are, halfway through 2025. Trump-2 seems to once again be swinging wildly from going (back) to the Moon to going to Mars. Scientific and engineering advances don’t do well in the face of such wild swings and inconstancy.”
China is going to beat America to 2026. The US cuts to NASA and even basic science will hinder American efforts for years to come.
Absolutely no one should surprised considering the state of the US right now. The country is in full blown decline.
In 5 to 10 years, America will be crying about how space is dominated by Russia, China, and India and will be begging for peaceful negotiations to rejoin space.
Very good chance that this happens. Trump is entirely useless when it comes to making any sound decisions
If Dumb could find a way to profit *personally* from a moon launch, we’d be there already.
This is like running over the finish line of a race years after in ended and declaring yourself the winner. China is the only country running this race so yes they will “win”. So what? Why is anyone falling for this nonsense?