NASA Expects Chinese Crewed Mission Around the Moon In 2027 (spacenews.com) 37
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says he expects China to fly taikonauts around the moon in 2027, "ratcheting up perceptions of a space race between China and the United States," reports SpaceNews. He is using that prospect to argue for a revamped Artemis strategy and an accelerated path toward a U.S. lunar return. From the report: "The next time the world tunes in to watch astronauts fly around the moon, which will likely be sometime in 2027, they will be taikonauts, and America will no longer be the exclusive power to send humans into the lunar environment," he said. While Isaacman has frequently discussed a race with China to be the next to land humans on the moon, this was one of the first times he predicted a 2027 Chinese crewed circumlunar mission. He repeated the comments later in the day at an industry reception.
China has not publicly announced plans for such a mission, which, as Isaacman described it, would likely be similar to NASA's Artemis 2 mission in April. There have been rumors of a mission along those lines, though, and an expectation of a roadmap of missions leading to a Chinese crewed landing by the end of the decade. So far, all the crewed missions to fly around, orbit or land on the moon have been flown by NASA: nine Apollo missions from 1968 to 1972 and Artemis 2. All the astronauts on those missions have been Americans except for Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on Artemis 2.
Isaacman has used the threat that China could land astronauts on the moon before NASA returns there as a rationale for revamping the Artemis lunar exploration program. In February, he announced that Artemis 3, which was to be a lunar landing attempt in 2028, will instead be a test flight in low Earth orbit in 2027, followed by a landing on Artemis 4 in 2028. In March, he changed other elements of Artemis at the agency's Ignition event, including effectively canceling the lunar Gateway to focus resources instead on a lunar base, while calling for a much higher cadence of robotic lander missions.
China has not publicly announced plans for such a mission, which, as Isaacman described it, would likely be similar to NASA's Artemis 2 mission in April. There have been rumors of a mission along those lines, though, and an expectation of a roadmap of missions leading to a Chinese crewed landing by the end of the decade. So far, all the crewed missions to fly around, orbit or land on the moon have been flown by NASA: nine Apollo missions from 1968 to 1972 and Artemis 2. All the astronauts on those missions have been Americans except for Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on Artemis 2.
Isaacman has used the threat that China could land astronauts on the moon before NASA returns there as a rationale for revamping the Artemis lunar exploration program. In February, he announced that Artemis 3, which was to be a lunar landing attempt in 2028, will instead be a test flight in low Earth orbit in 2027, followed by a landing on Artemis 4 in 2028. In March, he changed other elements of Artemis at the agency's Ignition event, including effectively canceling the lunar Gateway to focus resources instead on a lunar base, while calling for a much higher cadence of robotic lander missions.
Good for them (Score:4, Interesting)
The more the merrier, I say... at least in this context.
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Lets Race! (Score:5, Insightful)
US: Lets have an exciting space race! We're already been there and we've been trying to go back for like 20 years, so we're way ahead, but whatever, lets do it! Come ON! I'll bet you're going to race us like crazy. Oh BOY I'm excited.
China: Uh. I'm busy taking over all the parts of the world economy you don't seem to want to do anymore. Huh. So you're just not making ram for regular consumers anymore? Fine, I'll build another bunch of factories.
US: We want this to be more dramatic. Come on, it was so much fun beating the russians in the 1960s! GOD WE'RE IN SO MUCH DEBT IT TINGLES!
China:
US: HELLO? ARE YOU THERE? Ok, I'm going to start the race in 3... 2... 1... GOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.......!
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Micron is american. Micron announced it will exit the consumer market in February 2026 and focus on enterprise markets including data centers and artificial intelligence.
Re:Lets Race! (Score:5, Interesting)
The Chinese government is doing basically what the US government did back in the 1960s. Set a goal, make it happen, fund it properly. Gives private companies the confidence to invest in space, even if they aren't directly involved with government projects.
Except they also do it for stuff like electric vehicles and battery technology, renewable energy, railways, semiconductor manufacturing, steel production, and anything else they feel is strategically important to their economy.
Their goal is "before 2030", so 2029 at the latest, and they are on track for that. They either have or are at the prototype stage with everything they need. Their mission is not over ambitious either, it's a medium size lander and proven technologies. Blue Origin is also going with a reasonably conservative lander, but Starship is a much greater risk.
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Their mission is not over ambitious either, it's a medium size lander and proven technologies. Blue Origin is also going with a reasonably conservative lander, but Starship is a much greater risk.
All true, but it's worth pointing out that if the Starship lander succeeds it will enable us to do a lot more, a lot faster. The whole "15 refueling flights for every moon trip" seems kind of crazy on its face, but if you look at the costs (assuming Starship works and become fully reusable), it makes the total cost per kilogram delivered to the surface of the moon insanely low and enables comparatively massive payloads to be delivered.
Big risk, big (potential) reward. Running both the Starship and Blue M
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It's true that if it works as intended, Starship would be a fantastic tool. But aside from having doubts about that, it doesn't preclude others from getting them on a similar timescale, just a different way.
Blue Origin demonstrates that. Panned for being "behind" SpaceX, but when they fly stuff it tends to work and suddenly they caught up. The Chinese are the same, and they aren't the only other people working in this area. That said, the rate at which some of the private Chinese outfits have been advancing
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The advancements China has made to technology and infrastructure in a single generation is staggering. Modern cities full of quiet affordable self driving EVs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Exactly this. This is the pretext to send an additional couple of billions in contracts to SpaceX, which he always had close relations with.
Not to mention that Isaacson's company has a significant stake in SpaceX, so pumping up the valuation of SpaceX before it goes public is entirely in his best interest.
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You do understand that SpaceX is - by far - the cheapest orbital company?
SpaceX $2600-6000/kg
Others today: $20,000/kg
NASA (Space Shuttle) $54,000/kg.
Should NASA deliberately be spending more by choosing a more expensive company?
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And considering SpaceX is set to go IPO...perfect timing for more grifting on rump's part.
Be funny if they skipped the flyby (Score:1)
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That's an interesting idea. What do they gain from doing a flight around the moon? They get to test the spacecraft in that mission profile, but they have already landed things on the moon so stuff like the comms and navigation is already sorted out. They have a space station so have experience with long duration missions, and the moon is only medium duration.
Artemis didn't test separation and docking in lunar orbit, but Apollo 10 did. The Chinese can already do the docking reliably for their space station.
T
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I wonder... given what they've done with landers, they might try to one-up the US by landing a manned mission on the far side of the moon.
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I was thinking the same thing. Or maybe near the pole, to look for water. They already have comms satellites in place to communicate with the far side.
I'd say they are likely to try something that is clearly different to what Apollo did, and what Artemis is doing.
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They are copying the Elon Musk strategy. "Move fast and break things." They cannot fail. [youtube.com]
(They did manage to land a robot on the moon and have it fly back home, so it's not out of the question that they will reach their goal).
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Publicity stunt (Score:2)
It seems to me it is more about China showing off on the international stage that it can do stuff that once was the exclusive domain of the world's former superpowers.
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The real question is, is there a compelling economic or profit motive for sending humans to the moon? The answer to your question and also these questions is, probably not.
The CCP is certainly not above showing off. But typically they are a little more calculating than that, and quite careful. Usually their purpose in "showing off" is to project power. The CCP feels it's China's turn to rule the world as they see the rapid decline of the United States and Russia. However the CCP's own position is more
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Yes. We learned a lot about the formation of the solar system from the rocks Apollo brought back. We'd learn more if we had more rocks. It's also a great place to build telescopes.
More importantly, there are good industrial reasons to go to the moon. It's a big pile of resources and available energy already in orbit. Space habitats, manufacturing, power satellites, data centres and whatnot are silly currently, maybe sort of doable with cheap access to orbit like Starship promises, but pretty straightforward
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Yes. We learned a lot about the formation of the solar system from the rocks Apollo brought back. We'd learn more if we had more rocks. It's also a great place to build telescopes.
How many more moonrocks do we really need? And can't an unmanned craft bring back many more rocks than any manned mission, and much more cheaply?
More importantly, there are good industrial reasons to go to the moon. It's a big pile of resources and available energy already in orbit. Space habitats, manufacturing, power satellites, data centres and whatnot are silly currently, maybe sort of doable with cheap access to orbit like Starship promises, but pretty straightforward if you have an industrial base on the moon.
Anything the moon has the Earth has in much greater abundance. The sheer energy cost of moving anything productive to the moon makes producing all of these things on Earth much more cost appealing. A moon-based telescope sounds fun, but I'm not convinced it would be better than a telescope in its own orbit around Earth.
I'm not opposed to science, and I'm not oppo
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Pretty much any additional rock would have scientific value, which was your question. Rocks from interesting unsampled locations, like the far side or the south pole have much more scientific value. Potentially we could return them unmanned, but we're still not really at the point where a human with a hammer can be entirely replaced by a robot.
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Sorry, Apollo was about 300 ballrooms, not 1/3. Need another cup of coffee. If that example isn't dramatic enough, how about: all 11 years of Apollo cost a little more than half the requested increase in the US annual defence budget for 2027.
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> It's also a great place to build telescopes.
Radio telescopes probably, because the far side receives no interference from Earth. I can't see any reason to build optical or IR telescopes there rather than in orbit because in orbit you can point at anything wheres on the Moon you can only point at wherever is visible at the time.
Unless you're at the point where you can literally build them there from lunar resources. But that's quite some years away.
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Yeah, big optical telescopes are better in orbit. Not just putting them there, but building them there. The microgravity lets you build mirrors as big as you like, and also get baselines as big as you like. Hey, guess where you can get a lot of quartz to make giant mirrors?
Yes, that is the point. There are both industrial and scientific reasons to go to the moon. Picking up rocks is a scientific reason with some conside
China does not care (Score:1)
VIPER rover? (Score:1)
> calling for a much higher cadence of robotic lander missions.
I hope they revive VIPER. It was cancelled for being over-budget, but did important science. They alleged have a nearly completed probe in storage. Cutting edge needs a degree of flexibility.
Taikonauts (Score:2)
"Taikonauts" is not a word.
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Sure it is.
Back in 1978 I got a Taikonauts building kit with several figures for Christmas.
Wait, that was Micronauts. Totally different.
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What a waste (Score:2)