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China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon

An expert explains why this will be enormously bad for the United States.

The test, conducted outside of Beijing, used giant tethers to simulate lunar gravity as the vehicle fired main engines and fine control thrusters to land on a cratered surface and take off from there. But recent setbacks with SpaceX's Starship vehicle–one of two lunar landers under contract with NASA, alongside Blue Origin's Mark 2 lander—indicate that it will still be several years until these newer technologies are ready to go. Ars: Taking the longer view, is the United States or China better positioned (i.e., US spending on defense, reusable in-space architecture vs Chinese plans) to dominate cislunar space between now and the middle of this century?

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