NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting.

2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the second flight test and certainly now. They could have built a “dumb” second stage at any time, but aren’t that short-sighted.

3. Blue Origin? I’ve had high hopes for the guys for two decades now. Don’t hold your breath.

4. Anyone else? Really, really don’t hold your breath.

This whole “race to the moon, part II” is almost criminally stupid. Land on the moon when we can accomplish something there, not just to prove we haven’t lost our mojo since Apollo.

Of course, but there a few things to consider.

1. This is a new race. The olympics happen every four years to see which nation is the current best. It seems it’s time to find out again.

2. The last time the US was dominant was 56 years ago. That’s three generations. Based on SLS and the comments here, it seems extremely unlikely the US is still dominant. Let’s find out.

I've seen no indication that they see it in these terms. They've been pretty low-key about their progress.

To me it looks like the US obsession with reframe everything in terms of a "new cold war". From the US perspective, in end you look stupid if you lose, and you look stupid if you just spend a ton of money to repeat what you did last time

China has always been insular, and they don't think about space glories that much at the moment. It would take a couple more generations for them to care about something like that.

"Glory" can exist without comparing yourself to others. When they built the three-gorges dam they probably weren't thinking "our dam is better than those American dams". It's just impressive in its own right

They can be working on going to space without constantly bringing out the proverbial measuring tape to compare themselves to the US.

I'm not totally in the loop with the Chinese zeitgeist, so my post was a genuine question. Maybe they are comparing, maybe not. Both seem sensible reactions