As you know, the New Year was marked by China’s breakthrough in outer space. On January 2, the Chinese spacecraft Chang'e-4 successfully landed on the reverse side of the natural satellite of the Earth.
However, there are skeptics on our planet who with great doubt reacted to the cosmic breakthrough of the Chinese comrades. In particular, the delight in the Middle Kingdom did not appeal to American analysts.
As the expert of the publication Bloomberg Adam Minter notes, all statements by China about the fact that he will oust the United States as the dominant space power in the near future is an unheard of audacity. For the development of such a scenario is hardly possible. Space is a very expensive affair. And at one point, the space program of China will rest on the lack of funding.
“Thanks to the development of a dynamic and rapidly growing American commercial space industry, China will almost certainly be on the sidelines in the coming decades,” the expert notes.
In his opinion, the main thing that the United States was able to do in recent times was to commercialize space. This removes the burden on the budget and enables financial maneuver for the further development of NASA space programs. Thus, the Space Agency spent no more than 10% of the taxpayers' money on the development of the SpaceX program and the development of the Falcon-9 rocket. All other finances are from commercial space programs.
As Minter notes, as long as the United States continues to focus on developing its commercial space industry and continue to fund advanced scientific programs, they have little reason to fear a lag. Moreover, the United States has more chances to attract scientists and other talented specialists who want to receive income corresponding to their level, working in one of the most promising industries of the 21st century.
Of course, the merits of the United States in the conquest of space - beyond criticism. Recently, the Americans launched the probe "New Horizons" conducted a study of an asteroid that flew approximately 4 billion miles from Earth. The OSIRIS-REx probe entered the orbit of another cosmic small body flying at approximately the same distance from our planet. Moreover, NASA performs a permanent mission on Jupiter and four on Mars, has a Parker solar probe, and two Voyager spacecrafts left the Solar System and carried information about the Earth into distant space. It is all so.
But on the other hand, the Chinese are not alone in the conquest of space. Recently, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, has already visited the Celestial Empire. As for the merits of our country in space exploration, they are hardly inferior to the American ones in some parameters. And by the way, in China, the head of Roscosmos expressed the intention of the upcoming joint work on the exploration of the moon and the conquest of Mars.
