> the winners will merely be those

The best outcome is we get two Moon bases. I say this as someone who remains a fairly patriotic American. But we need competition and, more darkly, we need a backup.

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wongarsu 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I believe that's the inevitable outcome.

The Chinese will build a moon base, as a sign from the Chinese government to the Chinese people that China is capable of cutting-edge engineering and science (notably a demonstration to their own citizens - when was the last time you heard about the Chinese space stations outside China?).

America seems a bit shaky in their determination to actually build a moon base, though having Jared Isaacman as administrator gives hope. But regardless of whether America is currently on track, a successful Chinese moon base won't stay without answer

	▲	oefrha 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> when was the last time you heard about the Chinese space stations outside China? Last year, when negative news of delayed astronaut return was all over American news, e.g. [1][2]. Apparently makes American astronauts onboard Boeing ship being stuck in space less embarrassing. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/science/space/china-space... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/05/china/china-shenzhou-20-a...

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hparadiz 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The South Pole of the moon will end up one giant mega city due to it's constant sunlight. It will be a lot easier to get there once there is even one landing strip.

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kjkjadksj an hour ago | parent [-]

I don’t know why we are wasting all this money making it habitable for humans when robotics have taken such strides the last few decades. Manned missions made sense when we didn’t have these compute and robotic abilities we have today. Now, they are undue risk and cost and offer no real functionality but some misplaced national pride perhaps.

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hparadiz 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Because it's better for Earth's biosphere to mine things like lithium on the moon rather than polluting our biosphere. The North and South pole of the moon also serves as an excellent staging ground to put solar energy collectors that can then transmit continuous concentrated power to Earth.

The moon is dangerous because there's no people and civilization is 5 days away at best but if there was already civilization at the moon you wouldn't think it was dangerous.

On top of that the materials on the moon are already "on the high ground" meaning you don't need to spend a lot of money on propellant to get it into orbit. So building space habitats and delivering them into an appropriate orbit on the moon is a tiny fraction of the fuel needed from Earth. To put this into perspective the Apollo Lunar Module only needed 2.2 Tons of propellant to get the upper part of it back into orbit to meet up with the service module. 2.2 tons of propellant is basically nothing with the scales we are talking about.

On top of that if we could produce the propellant on the moon the costs and logistics and difficulty of all of this drop significantly.

So in short the best possible way to lower the risk, cost, and provide functionality is to establish civilization on the moon and get to the industrial age there as quickly as possible.

We're doing it regardless of what you naysayers will say about it because it's the right thing to do for a thousand different reasons. And we're doing the robot thing too. At the same time.

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godshatter 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

One more very minor step towards making the human race meteor-proof.

	▲	kjkjadksj 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Our biology precludes that. We are adapted to life on earth. Sad to say but we should be seeding tardigrades, not humans, if we care about sustaining earth life after earth is destroyed.

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HerbManic 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I will give you that. I will be more than happy to see both reach there in mutual success. I do fear the blow back of the more tribalistic folks that will see it as a threat rather than success.