Former NASA chief says United States likely to lose second lunar space race
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/09/ted-cruz-criticizes-trump-plan-to-cancel-sls-and-lunar-gateway-as-folly/
Former NASA chief says United States likely to lose second lunar space race
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/09/ted-cruz-criticizes-trump-plan-to-cancel-sls-and-lunar-gateway-as-folly/
19 Comments
They would have to actually be racing to lose a race.
No kidding. Talking about humans going back to the moon for 30 years and accomplishing nothing, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that America won’t be first.
Offtopic:
In the 1400s, when European nations were beginning to build the first ships to explore the high seas, China had well-constructed ships that dwarfed anything these nations had. They were used for exploration, trade, and diplomacy — including lavish gifts bestowed on rulers who acknowledged the might of the Chinese emperor.
Then, by the mid-1450s, just as European ships were starting to get better, these voyages stopped, the fleet was recalled and destroyed or left to rot, leaving the oceans uncontested in European hands. Of course, this decision changed the world for the next 500 years. Many historians have researched why this happened, and believe that cost concerns and a new emperor’s focus on northern borders may have caused this strategic misstep.
Google [Ming Dynasty Treasure Fleet] if you’d like to find out more, I’m really not making this up.
# Headline: Anyone paying attention says United States likely to lose second lunar space race
Instead of complaining about losing a “race” politicians and policy makers should be out there explaining why it worth doing. They want to pose this as not getting out there first but cannot be bothered to explain why it is even worth getting there at all. People on this r/space will not have any problem imagining a benefit, but for the general public just trying to get by this is uninteresting, and very few people are making the case as to why they should care.
It would help if they quit changing plans every administration.
The primary cause for the US lunar landing delay is that there are not enough changes of direction and plans. When you allow engineers to work on the same thing for more than a single administration they get lazy and fat. There is a huge need to shake things up, maybe switch the capsule used to send the crew to something else?
Why do we care about racing China, or anyone, back to something we’ve already done before? We should be pushing forward.
Lunar satellites? ✅️
Lunar rovers? ✅️
Boots on the Lunar ground? ✅️
Lunar samples returned? ✅️✅️ (so much to the point that NASA lost some and was giving it out as presents, and we still have so, so much of it left)
Second race? The US won THE race over 50 years ago. This is just NASA postering for a larger budget
Yeah that’s all we do since the current administration took over: lose
there cannot even be a debate about this
“dont use science, use common sense” the maga mantra
those morons elected this moron
so if an asteroid approaches earth the USA is NOT going to do anything but film it
China is developing [the Long March 10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_10) to land on the Moon. This rocket is very, very similar to the Falcon Heavy. The Falcon Heavy has been launching since 2018. I want to point out the irony in them using the Chinese clone of the Falcon Heavy to justify funding the very different SLS.
At any point since 2018, NASA could have paid SpaceX to human-rate the Falcon Heavy, to develop a version of Dragon suitable for missions in lunar orbit. Remember that SpaceX originally planned to use the Falcon Heavy for lunar flyby missions. NASA could have developed a crewed lunar lander designed to launch on the Falcon Heavy. SpaceX went with the Starship architecture because of NASA and Congress’s refusal to buy crewed Falcon Heavy launches.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1n7s4df/stub/nca306j “Last usage”)|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[RP-1](/r/Space/comments/1n7s4df/stub/nca535b “Last usage”)|Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene)|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1n7s4df/stub/nca6lvf “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SMART](/r/Space/comments/1n7s4df/stub/nca30l5 “Last usage”)|”Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology”, ULA’s engine reuse philosophy|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1n7s4df/stub/nc9zlbp “Last usage”)|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1n7s4df/stub/nca2j9m “Last usage”)|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[hydrolox](/r/Space/comments/1n7s4df/stub/nca535b “Last usage”)|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
—————-
^(7 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1n7ktr4)^( has 22 acronyms.)
^([Thread #11650 for this sub, first seen 3rd Sep 2025, 22:57])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Title should read: SpaceX leading second space race
Innovation from old players like Boeing slowed to a trickle. They got complacent with their market dominance and let their quality drop. Why should they keep getting mountains of taxpayer money?
There isn’t a “second lunar space race”
I’d love to see humans back on the moon and beyond, but there is zero urgency and zero meaningful difference between being the the *7th or 8th* manned moon landing.
The first person to summit Everest is just *the first person to summit Everest*. When the second person summited Everest, the first person did not somehow *”lose”* the race *to be the second person* to summit Everest.
The “race” narrative is contrived. */end rant (old man yelling at clouds)*
They picked Starship HLS for financial reasons. NASA has to drag its balls over glass shards to always come up short on budget requests. As long as that continues to happen, it’ll always miss timelines.
If that happens someone needs to trace it right back to this administration. That would an embarrassment. I always loved the saying that not only were we the only how got there but you took a car with us and left the keys in it for when we get back.
Can anyone here give a reason as to why the US would be interested in going back?
Well we can already get out there with a crew. Just need SpaceX to get in gear and deliver a lander.