Die USA verliert das Rennen, um zum Mond zurückzukehren, sagen Kritiker und zeigen auf SpaceX

Why would we need to race to return to the moon? Is this going to be an ongoing thing? Are they going to turn it into a competitive sport in the Olympics? We’ve got better things to worry about.

Losing? We’ve already lost. The Trump admin has seen to that.

This article is so short sited.

What race to the Moon? To set foot on the moon? The US won that. China’s about to catch up from their 60 year deficit.

The race to colonize the Moon? The US is way ahead in that race because Starship is the only system that makes that truly cost effective.

Point at gross underfunding of science in general.

There is so much happening in the private space sector at least, it seems like thats one area china actually is struggling with vs the west.

Super excited for rocketlabs neutron debut later this year, its going to be a significant new launch vehicle

No, Space X has helped the US maintain its space savvy.

The media has been glooming and dooming the US for years and years now. China was supposed to have knocked the US economy off its pedestal by now. LOL

Am I allowed to copy/paste my interpretation in [another sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1nlw47e/nyt_us_is_losing_race_to_return_to_moon_critics/)?

>Other parts of the NASA moon mission are nearly ready, after their own delays and cost overruns… But SpaceX’s lunar lander project is now so far behind schedule that there are increasing doubts the United States will beat China…

Starting off with a bang. Perhaps they should mention that Orion has been in development and funded sine 2006, and HLS since 2021?

>But seven current and former senior NASA officials, in [recent](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/9/there-s-a-bad-moon-on-the-rise-why-congress-and-nasa-must-thwart-china-in-the-space-race_2)public %5Bstatements%5D(https://www.congress.gov/118/chrg/CHRG-118hhrg54502/CHRG-118hhrg54502.pdf#page=70) and interviews with The New York Times, said their questions about SpaceX and its new Starship rocket had nothing to do with the public spat between the president and his biggest campaign donor.

Those 7 officials including Allen Cutler, President of t[he Coalition for Deep Space Exploration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_for_Deep_Space_Exploration), founded by Aerojet, Boeing, Lockheed and Northrup; Jim Bridenstine, who works for ULA; and John Shaw, who works for Sierra Space.

None of these conflicts of interest were described in this article.

>Part of the problem, former NASA officials acknowledge, is they chose an excessively complicated lunar landing plan, starting during Mr. Trump’s first term. Trump administration officials back then did not take up a proposal to construct a lander based on [existing, proven technology](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326075772_An_affordable_lunar_architecture_emphasizing_commercial_and_international_partnering_opportunities), said Mr. Loverro, who helped devise the alternative lander proposal starting in late 2019 when he joined NASA.

The link is to a paper describing an architecture utilizing the Constellation program. Ares V, which SLS is essentially derived from, was a far more capable rocket ([70t to TLI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_V) vs 27t for SLS). SLS can’t even deliver Orion to a low lunar orbit, necessitating all of these issues that the NYT is complaining about.

>This could include [reviving the earlier plan](https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/2/d/2dc97bb6-040b-4d15-ae69-6b8de637174d/448A0B95841995613C9A9B19135C104C.2024-01-17-griffin—testimony.pdf#page=4) for a simple, proven lunar lander design that could be built in about five years and not require orbital refueling, the [former](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lwLibrZFiA) NASA officials said.

If you click on the linked article, the first step to their plan is refueling a Centaur III upper stage in orbit. And hydrolox refueling is far more questionable than methalox, giving the complexities of dealing with liquid hydrogen. Clearly the writer of the article didn’t look at his own references. Also requires the SLS Block 2, which isn’t scheduled to launch until Artemis 9, and requires NG’s BOLE, which recently exploded on it’s test stand in Utah.

>Without such a shift, the United States is likely to lose the race, the former NASA officials predicted.

China is trying to replicate Apollo. Artemis is trying to build a moon base. The finish lines for both are fairly distant.

This was a really poorly researched and biased article. Shame on the author, Eric Lipton, and The NY Times.

Kind of annoying that these threads are an almost daily thing on r/space news now with no variation. Meanwhile actual tech or update posts are basically ignored.

With regards to blaming SpaceX though, i’d say that’s more the US governments fault for being so twitchy with plans over 2 and a half decades. „We’re doing constellation, actually no, we’re doing comets, WE’RE DOING MARS, actually no we’re doing the moon, we’re doing the moon.. but lower budget?“

I love Obama but his admin was terrible for space related programs.

Gross underfunding. It’s talk like that really shows how little you value science as a whole. Everything we learn about space and beyond is 2,000% worth it. How did we come up with green energy if it wasn’t for science? Please look more into these projects instead of reading headlines

The irony of DOGE is that Elon almost single haven’t guaranteed the loss of American superiority in the space race for generations. And he may have also guaranteed we’ll never make it to Mars in his lifetime.

Between attacks on education, stunting our ability to train the scientists and engineers needed to build stuff, and slashing science endeavors across the board, we will lose the future scientists we need to do pretty much everything.

In every meaningful way we’re moving backwards. Because conservatives don’t care about the future. They’re too engrossed in reliving the past and enshrining tradition. They’d take us back to 1950 if they could. That’s their ideal America. Well, they’re doing it by policy.

Oh no, we basically attacked science and slashed funding for NASA, who would have predicted there would be

*Checks notes+

Consequences

I just recently looked into this and got a bunch of interesting stats.

**NASA’s Record:**
– It took NASA 11 years to go from being founded to landing on the moon.
– It only took 7 years, if you count from the moment Kennedy announced the project specifically to land on the moon.
– During their first 11 years, NASA (building technology that simply had no real precursors) managed a ~95% success rate with their launches.
– By the time NASA had spent an inflation-adjusted amount of money comparable to the resources SpaceX has had access to, they were already doing manned orbits around the moon – clearly very close to accomplishing their objective.

**SpaceX’s Record:**
– Founded 23 years ago and still nowhere close to mission accomplished.
– by year 11 (when NASA had already succeeded), Space X was averaging only a ~70% success rate with their launches.
– While their record is improved today, nearly all of those launches are unnamed rockets bringing satellites into low earth orbit.
– Despite the benefit of 60 years of advances in human technology, SpaceX has only managed to get out of low earth orbit once, when they flung a car at the sun.
– While getting to Mars is a far more complicated project than the moon, SpaceX hasn’t even gotten so much as a Rover, satellite, or flyover to Mars, even as the refunded NASA has landed multiple rovers in the same relative period.

*So what’s the reason for the contrast?*

What we’re seeing here is the fundamental difference between a for-profit model and one that puts 100% of their recourses into accomplishing the mission.

While it would eventually cost more than SpaceX has received so far for NASA to land on the moon, an apples to apples comparison of how NASA was doing at this same point in time (in terms of both finances and literal time) shows that Musk isn’t remotely close to achieving what NASA had achieved more than half a century earlier.

This seems to confirm undeniably that trying to privatize space flight to make it „more efficient“, which was a major justification Musk provided to secure the tens of billions in funding they gave him, is simply not possible

**Because at the end of the day, for-profit companies prioritize profit over results, while publicly funded programs place 100% of their resources until accomplishing the mission.**

Oh no, not the moon! What will we do if someone else is on the moon? They will have moon advantage and what will we have? Nothing, thats what.

Didnt a U.S corp just put another lunar lander on the moon back in March?