Seems that the reduced cost is being taken advantage of. And, make sure to exclude the drastic reduction in non-lunar launches in your cost comparison for lunar launches.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon#2...

NASA is stuck in the past and does it consciously and voluntarily.

And as others have said, there is really no such thing as a cheap rover. As a recent example, there was recently a push by NASA HQ to refurbish a Mars rover engineering unit (basically a one-to-one copy of the one sent to Mars, kept at JPL for use in ops planning and issue debugging) into an operational lunar rover. The estimated cost to take this existing piece of hardware and make it fully flight ready and suitable for the new mission was hundreds of millions of dollars.

But the reason we kept throwing good money after bad is because the goal was never really about making a good launch system. It was all about sending money and creating stable long-term jobs in various states and districts, actively supported by the politicians representing those areas. So you had parts being built all over the place, in a way that just sends costs skyrocketing, but that's okay - because the rocket isn't the goal.

Of course the government itself is aware of this problem, much like fishermen are aware that overfishing is self destructive in the long-run, even if they are nonetheless individually motivated to do exactly that. So I think this was why the big push for commercializing space. And I think we'll ultimately see the exact same thing with deeper space missions and technologies. SpaceX's goal is Mars and I see no reason to think they will fail there. At that point, costs for various Martian missions - be they sample return, rovers, or whatever else - should be relatively negligible relative to today. Exactly as happened when we went from ferrying people to the ISS using the Space Shuttle, to when we started launching them on Falcon rockets.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Organic_Molecule_Analyser

We should aim for the long game. An insanely expensive one-time mission using disposable rockets to analyze rocks that we've already analyzed with rovers is probably not the best path.

Okay, okay, rather we're not getting humans back off of Mars anytime soon.

Landing is by far the easy part. MSR was partly a mission to see how hard it really is to get anything back into space from the Martian surface. If you can manage a pound, you can probably then manage 3 or so 180 pound humans and all their safety support.

Like, think of it. You somehow have to land a fully fueled rocket on freaking Mars. No site prep, near vacuum and no aero breaking, very expensive and nearly impossible second chance.

Fine fine, you just land the shell and then refuel on Mars with some form of automated fuel refinery on Mars. Like, if you have robots that can do that, you've ended capitalism already and have no need for humans in the first place.

Im not saying a human return mission is impossible, but it is just so very much harder than a Trillion dollar Apollo program lets us believe.

So what advantage, in the realm of all possibilities, would this give China that we should be seriously concerned about?

We have such bigger existential threats right now that my emotional response to the quoted text is an aggressive lack of concern.

Not only are political officers making science decisions, but nasa lost its way in the depths of over engineered missions due to requiring a senator to be bribed by the quantity of home stage work.

If it doesn't happen then its of worse quality.

The website wasn't available anymore

The Chang’e missions plan for this in 2030 and they have hit every target to date. While the US is currently targeting 2028, it isn't inconceivable that it can slip by two years.

China also does this. We just don't hear about it because they also quash the reporting.

More business in China though, tricky to prioritize since I'm doing any of this for the abundance of intimacy and the slavic people come with that, for me. I need to learn Mandarin and Russian.

at least Cantonese is no longer seriously a contender in my sphere. That was distracting

What worries me the most is that I can’t imagine students and citizens going to protest en masse on the streets against the war. They’re too busy to complain on X and Tiktok to do anything about it.

I think you missed the “pointless” part of the argument, such as it was.

By killing the anti-nuclear leadership of such country and proving their opponents points that only nukes could protect them from the USA...

It was called JCPOA but Israel didn't like it because it would've meant peace for the region. War _is_ the point for Israel at this point.

Sorry, but all you did was:

1. Showed them and the world that treaties with you are worth nothing

2. Showed them and the world, to gain the respect of the US, you need nukes. Decades of loyalty, treaties or good partner have been shown to be worth nothing, while being an authoritarian dictatorship and having nukes are respected.

3. Showed them and the world that having US bases on your soil is a liability and not a protection.

All in all if you were US president and your task was to destroy the US' standing in the world, there is not much more you could have done.