I'm John Batchew with Henry Sikolsky of the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center, and Henry and I enjoy changing a little bit of direction now and again into low Earth orbit, and now today we're going to go to the Earth-Moon system, and maybe the Mars Earth-Earth Moon System.

Henry, there's an article at Ars Technica, an interview with Dean Chung, a distinguished scholar

along at the Heritage Foundation, by Mr. Berger of Ars Technica, a sophisticated scientific

and rocket writer, about the so-called race between China, the People's Republic of China and NASA,

the United States, back to the moon.

I believe the opinion is that China is ahead.

Is that correct, Henry?

That's what people are mumbling about because they got pictures of a moon lander test and some space lift booster tests that suggests that they're further along than we thought.

And, of course, there's a lot of hand-bringing about our program that it's further behind that people say.

And so the great fear next is they'll be number one on the moon, and we will get there number two.

And I want to explore not the facts of the engineering at this point.

The U.S. has the SLS.

It has starship being tested in Bocahika by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

It also has money at NASA and a president who says get to the moon by the end of my term.

The Chinese, they have Long March 10, which just did a static test, long March 9 that is

expected to do a static test by 2030, and they have a lander now.

Putting all these elements together, you could say China's ahead.

What does that mean, Henry, we've been

there, we've done that. What would it, what would significant be about the effect of China

landing on the moon before the U.S. can get its boots on? Well, I think Dean Chang was quite

eloquent in explaining it.

Personally, I am a skeptic about the importance of manned space travel, but I think his point trumps anything, I think.

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