China moon
We learned last week that China intends to put a man on the moon in 2024. I posted a few months back about American intentions for sending men back to the moon by 2018. Assuming all schedules hold, we will easily beat China to the moon. Of course, this isn't a race, at least not like the one we were in with the Soviet Union in the 1960s.
The Chinese space program has a fairly long history and had various points of contact with the Soviet space program. While Chinese launch vehicles and crew capsules are largely homegrown, the Chinese space program is rooted in the communist camaraderie of China and the former Soviet Union. So, what can we expect from China? The Soviets never put a man on the moon, but they came closer than most of the American public realizes. If not for the death of their foremost rocket engineer, Sergei Korolev, in 1966, the Soviets might have beaten us. Imagine how the American space program might have fared if Wernher von Braun had died in 1966. The Soviet space program also managed to kill a few hundred engineers, launch site mechanics, and a few cosmonauts during the push for the moon with catastrophic rocket failures that were covered up for decades. China of course subscribes to state secrecy and has a recent history of success at all costs. Thankfully the 24 hour news cycle and availability of satellite reconnaissance should blunt any attempts at hiding launch failures and any associated loss of life. Regardless, the Chinese space program is robust and if their recent economic aspirations offer any clue, their space program is being pursued with equal or greater vigor.
China and the United States have wary relations, but at the moment there is no reason for either nation to feel threatened by the other. I hope that relationship holds for the foreseeable future such that our mutual efforts to reach the moon can be accomplished in each nation's own time. Mankind's first exploration of the moon was largely driven by political posturing and ideological conflict. I would like to think that in the 50 years that will pass between the last time we were on the moon and the next, we can all go there simply because we want to.
