China has landed on the moon three times, apparently. At this rate they're going to get to Mars first. https://t.co/7H1RoTt4U2
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 4, 2020
Maybe Musk will beat the Chinese but NASA won’t.
Why?
Because if you work for the Chinese Space Agency and write a paper about how going to the moon is racist colonialism or how we should rename celestial objects like the Sombrero Galaxy because it’s racist, the CCP will take you outside and shoot you in the back of the skull.
Oh, boy, three unmanned landings on the moon!
The US landed five unmanned probes on the moon between 1966 and 1968. We also landed six manned missions on the moon. We landed four unmanned probes on the moon in 2011 and 2012!
I honestly don’t care what NASA does — it’s really not much more than the orbital FAA as far as I’m concerned — and fully expect Musk (if he’s allowed) to land there before the Chinese.
It is more than that.
SpaceX has done fantastic things, cheaply, on time, etc… because they are a for profit company. They do not have to obey the first law of bureaucracies. Boeing and Lockheed teamed up to build a crew capsule, and so far, it is nothing but delays, meetings, investigations, etc… SpaceX is launching astronauts. They run a lean operation.
The CCP has the mental mindset to run a lean operation, and they are willing to sacrifice as many people as they can to prove they are better than the rest of the world. (Humans are one resource they have in abundance.) Will they put people on Mars first? Maybe. But I am sure it will be a one way mission.
But, as COVID-19 showed, there’s no one in the CCP willing to tell their boss “you’re wrong”.
And lean? Really? Lots of Little Princes need comfy jobs so they at least have a chance at a wife.
Did they actually land on the moon?
The WSJ had an image which they captioned as a photo of the device landing on the moon, but that’s obviously impossible since there isn’t anyone there to take the picture. So it’s an artist impression. A look at their website shows it’s a still from a video which is a simulation (though not labeled as such).
I too can make a video of a widget landing on the moon. That doesn’t mean I actually did land anything.