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Editor: Kangkang

This year, China's space program seems to have pressed the fast-forward button, with dense progress that is overwhelming.

The new generation of "Mengzhou" crewed spacecraft has successfully completed the escape system test that determines the astronauts' lives. Its partner, the lunar lander "Lanyue," has also smoothly run through the entire process verification of landing and takeoff on the moon's surface.

What provides power for all of this is the new generation of crewed rocket "Long March 10," which has completed a critical tethered ignition test. These series of successes have undoubtedly once again focused the global space community's attention on the East.

Seeing the Chinese people's steps toward the moon becoming faster and faster, Americans are completely unable to sit still. Even some American media have started to criticize America, believing that in the new era's space competition, America will be completely defeated by China. Is there any reason for this claim? Is China really stronger than the United States now?

Two Ways of Hardware

Although the United States completed the great feat of manned moon landing during the Cold War, they have found it extremely difficult to replicate previous technologies after developing for decades. The root cause lies in the comprehensive decline of American industrial capabilities.

The United States once used the entire nation's strength to lift Armstrong to make that "giant leap for mankind," which was indeed inspiring. However, they are now powerless.

Moreover, because the United States had to complete this feat before the Soviet Union, the huge political pressure forced them to pursue speed. It can be said that the United States took a big step from manned spaceflight to manned moon landing directly.

As a result, Western media at the time generally viewed this action as "running across the Atlantic in a washing machine," which also shows how hasty the United States' moon landing was.

Although it ultimately succeeded, this approach of pursuing speed inevitably led to technical risks. Now looking back at China, from planning to implementation, it has steadily advanced, emphasizing "risk control" and "steady victory."

From the nearly thousand-ton thrust of the Long March 10, to the Mengzhou spacecraft, which can carry seven people in low Earth orbit and three people in lunar orbit, to the Lanyue lander, which not only carries people but also carries a lunar rover and scientific payloads, and envisions being a "lunar home," all aspects are tightly coupled.

This emphasis on independent research and development and self-verification ensures that there will be no awkward situations where subsystems fail to work together.

In contrast, the U.S. "Artemis" program resembles an aggressive "modular outsourcing" experiment. It lacks stable national power to protect the project and does not have a complete aerospace industry to support it.

It can only rely on external commercial companies, which inevitably brings great uncertainty.

The biggest "Achilles' heel" of the plan is the lunar lander, which has yet to have a specific delivery schedule. The main option is SpaceX's "Starship" under Elon Musk. This spacecraft is designed to be revolutionary, but its testing process has been full of drama, with repeated failures and delays.

More importantly, Starship must not only succeed in launch but also verify high-difficulty actions such as in-orbit refueling and precise docking in space. These are all new technologies that have never been widely practiced in human space history. NASA internal assessments even believe that Starship may not be ready until 2028.

As a backup option, Blue Origin's lander development is even slower, currently still in the design phase.

This makes the entire U.S. moon landing plan stuck in delays, and its theoretical industrial system, space experience, and commercial aerospace advantages are firmly constrained by poor institutional defects.

Execution is the Hard Truth

If hardware is the body, then project management and strategic perseverance are the soul. In this endurance race, China's execution capability demonstrates a "script-like" rigor.

China's strategy is full of strategic patience. What the outside world sees as each step is backed by long-term preparation.

For example, the already successful Chang'e 5 and 6 missions are not just unmanned moon exploration; they are also key technology "rehearsals" for future manned moon landings, clearing up technical blind spots such as moon takeoff and orbital rendezvous one by one.

This "validate first, integrate later, and execute finally" process minimizes risk. It turns the official announced goal of achieving manned moon landing before 2030 from a possibility into a "high probability event" in the eyes of the outside world. Every step is taken very solidly and stably, almost somewhat rigid.

On the contrary, the U.S. has fallen into another dilemma. As some foreign media pointed out, the problem is not lack of ability, but "lack of determination." The most direct manifestation is the repeated "delays" of the Artemis program's timeline.

The moon landing time point has been delayed from the initially ambitious 2024 to 2026, and now it has slipped to 2027. Even so, the Artemis 2 mission scheduled for 2026 will only be a circumlunar flight and not a landing.

And the real mission to step on the moon, the 3rd mission, is entirely dependent on the delivery issue of the aforementioned lander.

A deeper reason lies in the fluctuation of strategic goals. The U.S. space strategy seems to keep switching between returning to the moon and landing on Mars, causing unstable project execution and unclear objectives.

This "changing plans and unclear direction" management style prevents its massive technological and industrial advantages from effectively converging. Ironically, the new plan claims to learn from the lessons of the Apollo program, which was canceled due to "unsustainability," but itself has fallen into a new unstable situation.

The End is Not Just the Moon

Touching down on the moon is not the end. Behind this competition, both countries have depicted completely different long-term visions.

China's blueprint is a "space economy circle" centered around a space station, with Earth-Moon coordination. A key evidence is the "double-edged sword" design of the Long March 10 rocket. It has a reusable first stage version called "Jia," planned to replace the current Long March 2F rocket, executing space station transportation tasks.

According to the plan, this "Jia" version is expected to make its first flight in 2026, even earlier than the three-stage configuration version for moon landing. This clearly indicates that ensuring and expanding the routine operation of the "Tiangong" space station, this space laboratory, is China's more urgent strategy at present.

Currently, more than ten countries including Pakistan have confirmed their participation in cooperation, and "Tiangong" is planned to expand from a "T" shape to a more powerful "Gan" shape.

Land on the moon is just a key step in this larger blueprint. The ultimate goal is to build a lunar research base, develop lunar resources, and form a sustainable, economically productive Earth-Moon space system.

American Artemis program, its underlying logic is to use national investment to ignite the flame of commercial aerospace, eventually giving birth to a market-driven, sustainable "new frontier of space."

The United States insists on choosing high-risk technologies like Starship and in-orbit refueling, not just to complete one moon landing, but to lay the groundwork for future space logistics, interplanetary transport, and resource mining commercial activities. They bet that once the technology breakthroughs, they can open up a brand-new commercial space age at a lower cost.

However, this grand vision depends entirely on the current uncertain technological gamble. This makes it seem "big thunder, small rain" compared to the practical competition with the Chinese model. Although the future is exciting, the present is arduous.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, this new lunar race is essentially a contest of strategic philosophy.

China's "state-led, system-oriented" model, with its extremely high certainty and steady execution efficiency, has shown remarkable energy in this endurance marathon, demonstrating the amazing power of catching up later.

While the U.S. "market-driven, innovation-driven" model paints a more spectacular future, it is currently constrained by its inherent high risks and uncertainties.

Ultimately, who can return to the moon first is undeniably important, but what is more worth our deep reflection is: which "mindset" can more effectively guide humanity to truly enter a new era of deep space exploration that is regularized and systematic?

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7569501308026192420/

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