Gee whiz, maybe we should have been properly funding our space program all of these years instead of wasting it on making the military industrial complex filthy fucking rich and the world less secure overall?
US: continually decides to not fund scientific exploration of space
Also US: GUYS! BE AFRAID! ANOTHER COUNTRY DID DECIDE TO SPEND MONEY ON IT! NOW WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO IF…UM…WELL, I GUESS IF THEY TAKE OVER SPACE…? Or…wait, what are we concerned about? Ah, fuck it. Cut NASA’s budget again. We got genocide to fund and taxes to cut for the wealthy.
Dang maybe we should take a fraction of the trillions we spend on the military to fund scientific research, and also health and education while we're at it so we'd get even more potential scientists.
Export all your technology and jobs to cheaper labour to make more profit. Now you will slowly become bankrupt, as no one can afford the enshitification products and services.
So they had no issue relying on Russia to service the ISS ever since they shutdown the space shuttle, but now they're afraid of China... doing space science faster?
Ignoring the fact that this is not even a real concern, maybe don't spend morbillions on free munitions for Israel or Lockheed's next stupid idea.
They defunded NASA so hard that they started hallucinating about going back to the moon with 15% of the Apollo budget.
Anyone concerned that the US will be "overtaken" by anything coming out of China right now needs to go read about what's been happening in China for the last 5 years.
They must have made some huge advances since the last time I checked in on them because they haven't exactly been considered sophisticated in the art of rocketry for a couple centuries now. They first had a person in space in 2003 and they're still using the same Shenzou line of rockets since that time. They've had some controversies about where their boosters are landing and covering people with Hydrazine which is also an outdated fuel type, imo.
While US youth are rotting their brains via china's tiktok, Chinese youth are actually learning about science and other useful skills. Of course this is going to happen