this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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The first woman in space was Soviet. The first North American of African or latino descent was a Cuban who flew with the Soviets. You get the picture. I'm no tankie. As bad as authoritarian commies are and as much as those were PR stunts to shame the US on the world stage, the US preferred to exclude they own citizens based on misogyny and racism than shield themselves from international criticism.
Human spaceflight is all about the optics as there isn't much practical benefit. The optics the US was sending in the 60s was of clean cut military white men being sent to the moon by Nazi scientists and the majority was just fine with that.
Not sure that China will beat the US to the moon. They are making a lot of steady progress in spaceflight and technology in general and without the politics and waste we have seen for decades hampering US spaceflight. But even with the gap China has to make up I don't think it is unrealistic to expect the first woman on the moon will be Chinese now.
Wrong. China's politics and waste may look different, they're still there in huge amounts. Institutionalized corruption and cultural corner cutting, whether for a capitalist goal, or a power control and egocentrism goal, are still corruption and corner cutting.
Clearly there is lots of corruption and waste in China but I am not sure how much it would be tolerated when national ambitions are at stake and spaceflight is fairly adjacent to national security. I could be wrong. The US clearly wasted a lot of opportunities and several decades.