HN Reader

China has a chance of landing humans on the moon before Artemis, but if it does, it will be because America's space program is more ambitious, not less.

Lanyue, which masses 26 metric tons, can land two (maybe four?) astronauts on the moon plus a 200 kg rover. Space X's Starship is designed to land 100 tons on the moon--that's 100 tons of payload.

Let's say you want to build a small moon base, one that's maybe 100 tons (ISS is 400 tons). How many Lanyue launches would be necessary? Maybe 10? Now remember that each launch is expendable. It will cost China between $500 and $1 billion per launch. That's $5 to $10 billion for a moon base, not counting the cost of the base itself!

Starship is designed to be fully re-usable. Their goal is to get each launch to cost $10 to $20 million total. To land 100 tons on the moon, they will have to refuel in orbit by launching between 10 and 20 tanker flights. That means one trip to the moon costs $200 to $400 million maximum. Even assuming that Starship underperforms and can only land 50 tons on the moon, we still only need two launches for a total cost of $800 million maximum.

That is literally 10 times cheaper than Chinese capabilities; alternatively, it is 10x the payload at the same cost.

Of course, there are two major developments that Space X still needs to demonstrate: rapid re-use (to bring the cost down) and in-space refueling. And that's why it's taken so long.

But if/when they pull it off, it won't really matter if China lands first. The American program is much more ambitious.

Is there a good, consolidated technical description of their mission architecture?

(Apparently Artemis II is now pushed off the March [1]. Alongside Starship’s next scheduled launch [2].)

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/02/03/nasa-conducts...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starship_launches

This space race is different for one core reason: China is more stable than the Soviet Union was in the 1960s.

If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth. They'll keep going, and they have the economic base to expand their program.

I think we're seeing the beginning of a new kind of space race. It's likely to be much longer term and grander in scale over time, as we compete for the best spots on the Moon and the first human landing on Mars in the decades to come.

It is interesting to see who will get there first. China seems to be right on target with their schedule, but the US is being more ambitious, this also looks a bit more fragile on execution.

I long suspect Blue Origin will be the first US based to touch down as Starship is just too complicated to get it done in the next 2-3 years, but that doesnt mean even the 2028 landing is assured.

Space exploration had been fairly low key for decades but the last decade has been something to see.

Looking forward to finally someone landing human on the Moon eventually after half century since last alleged US landing.

Bonus points if it's gonna be woman finally, good role model for girls.

Interestingly, when I was in Taiwan (not China, I understand, but in the general area) in 2012 to visit our Taipei office, the subject of the Apollo moon landings came up during lunch. All the Taiwanese workers at the table (about 3 or 4) said that the moon landing was a hoax.

A few years later, a few people from our Taipei office, whom I did not meet during my trip, transferred to our US office. So I asked them what they thought of the moon landings. They also said the landings were a hoax.

Not a perfect sampling, but still interesting.

I wonder what the average person in China thinks of the Apollo moon landings. Or maybe it's just that many non-Americans in general think that the moon landings are a hoax.

Relevant: can you get root with only a [cigarette] lighter?

[1]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41765716

Listen am not a conspiracy theorist. But haven’t we done this before? If so, why does it seem like we haven’t?

We already know how to do this, right? Right!?

I am genuinely curious.

At least people will stop countering any criticism of the US with "Well, it's the only country that put a man on the moon too!" For the rest... is there anything humans can do up there robots can't do better and cheaper?

As a historical note, the first President Bush proposed in 1989 to establish a base on the Moon and send astronauts to Mars by 2020. In 2004, the second President Bush set a goal of returning to the Moon by 2020 and going to Mars in the 2030s, starting the Constellation program. In 2017, Trump announced that astronauts would return to the Moon, with the Artemis III project now planning a landing no earlier than 2028.

As a result, I don't have a lot of optimism about a US landing on the Moon. On the other hand, the James Webb Space Telescope did succeed even though the launch date slipped from 2007 to 2021. So I've learned not to be completely pessimistic.

Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/12/us/bush-sets-target-for-m... https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/us/bush-backs-goal-of-fli... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program

If another space race is what it takes, then I welcome it.

Some people seem to think the previous space race was about technology. That was all incidental. The Space Race was entirely geopolitical. It was a conflict proxy, an artifact of the Cold War. Any technology was entirely incidental.

The US has been talking about a return to the Moon for 50 years. George W Bush talked about it in 2004. It still hasn't happened. Artemis is limping along but it's entirely pork barrelling for the overly expensive SLS program that really no future.

Some might say SpaceX will come to the rescue. That's... doubtful. Notably, Elon calls the Moon "a distraction" [1]. Why would he do this? It's free money from the government.

The answer is actually pretty simple: Tsarship simply isn't designed for this mission type. Landing a Starship on the MOon is much more complex than, say, the LEM for the Apollo missions or the proposed Chinese lunar lander. If you could, your astronats would be 40 meters off the ground. The big advantage of a "traditional" lunar lander is it can't really topple over. Plus the Apollo LEM also had a very simple engine that could only ever be used once but the big advantage was that it was extremely difficult to fail.

If you exclude all that, Starship is behind schedule and still requires developing technology that they haven't even begun to test, most notably in-orbit refueling.

So why is China doing all this? I suspect it's mainly to develop their own reusable rocket program with a side of national pride. China is very concerned with their national security interests. Being able to launch things cheaply is a critical national security interest.

Still, the mission architecture of China's mission (from what I've read) is still fairly complex, requiring two vehicles to rendezvous in lunar orbit. That's also why I think the primary goal is orbital launch capacity.

[1]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1875023335891026324