This article only obliquely mentions in the last paragraphs, but there's a parallel Chinese program that recently brought back samples from the moon, and will attempt Mars sample return, launching in 2028,
Anyone wanting to be involved in the future of scientific research should probably start learning Mandarin. We're going the way of the Soviets, where political officers will quash any science that doesn't fit their ideology.
<a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/trump-planning-to-hand-veto-power-over-nih-grants-to-political-appointee/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/trump-planning-to-ha...
Do we really need to frame China’s succes here in terms of American decline? Do you think everyone outside the US views the moonlanding as a black page in history?
It’s fine to talk about a “race” if jingoism is the thing that gets most people on board with funding Nasa. But we ought to know better.
It's hard to imagine, since the moonlandings, if America kept its pace in space exploration, how far ahead of everyone else it would be, but also how far along everyone else would be. America was the catalyst for the impossible in that era, and then we decided to abandon it for... basically nothing. Enriching corporations, I guess?
People took issue with the cost of space exploration in context of "the good the money could do here on Earth", but then when we shifted resources that way, the money did absolutely no good here on Earth.
President Nixon cancelled NASA manned deep space exploration programs due to rising costs from the Space Shuttle program and the Vietnam War. It wasn't politically sustainable to keep funding everything. With the benefit of hindsight one could argue that we should have withdrawn sooner from Vietnam and cancelled the Space Shuttle program.
peri-cl · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-3" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-3
notabee · · focus · HN ↗
Fraterkes · · focus · HN ↗
It’s fine to talk about a “race” if jingoism is the thing that gets most people on board with funding Nasa. But we ought to know better.
dclowd9901 · · focus · HN ↗
People took issue with the cost of space exploration in context of "the good the money could do here on Earth", but then when we shifted resources that way, the money did absolutely no good here on Earth.
nradov · · focus · HN ↗