From radicalism to ending and then chasing: the manned moon landing war between China, the United States and Russia

In the past two years, the most obvious feeling in the technology circle is the trend of car manufacturing and space fever. Since SpaceX successfully recovered the rocket, the curtain of space fever has been quickly raised. The continuous launch and service operation of the Starlink satellites, the successful launch and scientific research of the Chang'e lunar exploration series probes, the Tianwen and Perseverance Mars probes, the Xihe solar exploration satellite, and the pleasant space travel of the wealthy people in commercial aerospace have accelerated the human dream of deep space exploration.

The success of commercial space exploration and lunar and Mars exploration has also led major space powers to put the shelved manned lunar exploration back on the agenda. Recently, busy Russia, in the gap between its stalemate war with Ukraine, announced that it would pick up its own lunar exploration plan and join hands with China to carry out multiple lunar landing plans.

At the end of 2019, NASA also deployed the latest detailed strategy for manned lunar exploration. After the Biden administration came to power, the Artemis lunar exploration program was confirmed to continue. It is planned to send NASA astronauts and astronauts from countries that have cooperative relations with NASA to the moon around 2025.

my country's manned lunar landing plan has also been confirmed with the successful operation of the space station and the continuous good news from major aerospace projects such as Beidou and Chang'e. It is planned to achieve the goal of manned lunar landing through two rocket launch missions around 2030.

At this point, the manned lunar landings of China, the United States and Russia are all imminent, and the competition for lunar landing has officially begun.

Moonshot: Radical and Final

In the field of aerospace, the United States and Russia are countries with strong technical strength. As early as 60 years ago, when we were still hungry, the United States and Russia had already begun exploring outer space. The first human to enter space was Gagarin from the Soviet Union. Gagarin took the Vostok 1 spacecraft on April 12, 1961, successfully launched and finally stayed in space for 108 minutes, which was recorded in the annals of human history.

Gagarin's success gave the Soviet Union more confidence, and the Soviet Union began to design the Soyuz series of spacecraft and began to head for the moon. When the Soviet Union was developing aerospace technology, its technical strength was the world's big brother. The dream is beautiful, but landing on the moon is not a simple matter. It requires a lot of money, innovative technology, and countless tests to ensure the safety of each link. In the process of preparing the manned lunar rocket, the Soviet Union made many mistakes and changes, resulting in the failure of the three unmanned Soyuz spacecraft it launched.

As the Soviet Union's moon landing program continued to fail, the United States also announced a manned moon landing program, which is the well-known Apollo program. The United States' manned moon landing program was almost synchronized with the Soviet Union, starting in the early 1960s and ending in December 1972, lasting about 11 years and costing a total of US$25.5 billion.

Although the Soviet Union's space technology was ahead of the United States at the time, the United States took the lead in manned lunar landing and stole the limelight. In the manned lunar landing competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's lunar landing plan lagged behind the United States. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the economy began to decline. Russia had no spare energy to develop the space industry, which burned money, and its lunar landing plan was shelved.

The end of the Apollo program and the end of the Cold War made the United States set economic development as the main theme, and the space industry of the two major powers entered a trough period.

Moon landing re-emerges: the race to catch up

During the Soviet era, the Soviet Union, as a big brother, had strong technical strength and was the undisputed overlord in the field of aerospace. After the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States returned to the development of people's livelihood and economy. With the doubling of economic and technological strength, the United States has taken the top spot in aerospace technology. While the United States is meddling in other countries and acting as an "international policeman", our aerospace industry has been advancing rapidly and gradually improved.

By the time we attracted the attention of other space powers, we had already shaken off our previous backwardness and become a leader in the field of space, starting to compete head-on with other powers. Russia also felt the crisis among the lagging space powers and picked up space technology to start competing.

On the 50th anniversary of Armstrong's moon landing, NASA announced the Artemis program. The United States plans to return to the moon by 2024 and eventually establish a long-term living base on the lunar surface.

In fact, as early as 2004, the United States had the idea of ​​manned lunar landing, but this mission named "Constellation Project" was canceled because of the high cost. In June 2017, Trump signed an order to accelerate the pace of US lunar exploration. In September 2020, NASA announced the outline of the Artemis plan and started a series of experiments. After Biden took office, the US government confirmed that it would continue to implement the Artemis plan and reiterated that it would send NASA astronauts and astronauts from countries that have cooperative relations with NASA to the moon around 2025.

We have also gradually accumulated the strength to land on the moon in the vortex of competition. Looking back at our space industry in recent years, it can be said that it has developed explosively. The successful operation of Beidou satellites, Chang'e Project, Mars exploration, and space stations all demonstrate the achievements of aerospace workers in recent years. In terms of manned lunar landing, starting with the Chang'e Project, a total of five probes have been launched to the moon.

In October 2007, Chang'e-1 was successfully launched. During its orbit around the moon, it obtained a series of scientific results, including images of the entire moon, the distribution of some chemical elements on the lunar surface, the thickness of the lunar soil, etc., laying the foundation for subsequent projects to explore the moon.

(Panoramic view of the lunar surface taken by the Chang'e-5 lander)

Chang'e 2 and 3 lunar probes were also launched at an average frequency of three years. In December 2018, Chang'e 4 successfully landed autonomously on the south pole of the far side of the moon, achieving the first soft landing of a human probe on the far side of the moon. In November 2020, Chang'e 5 flew to the moon, and in December the returner carrying lunar samples landed safely in the designated area. Twenty years after the Soviet Union's "Luna 24" unmanned exploration mission in 1976, humans obtained new lunar soil samples.

The successful experiments of the Chang'e series of projects laid the foundation for our subsequent manned lunar landing plan, and the progress of the manned lunar landing plan began to accelerate. In a technology sharing meeting, aerospace technology experts revealed that they plan to realize our own real "Chang'e flying to the moon" through two launch missions in 2030.

Manned lunar landing is a complex engineering technology and costs a huge amount of money. Why are major powers willing to pay such a price to compete for landing on the moon? For major powers, dominance in the field of aerospace is a business card of technological and economic strength. At the same time, in modern warfare, the transfer of manned space technology has great potential for the military field. Manned spacecraft can perform reconnaissance and surveillance tasks very well. For example, during the first and second Gulf Wars, astronauts on the Russian Mir space station and the International Space Station conducted a large number of observation activities in the war zone and obtained a lot of useful military information.

Manned lunar landing can expand a country's influence in global technology and economy, upgrade its military strength in modern warfare, and expand industrial and international cooperation with other countries in the deep space field. Driven by these important values, the national-level manned lunar landing competition between the United States, Russia and China has begun to accelerate.

The Great Leap Towards Interstellar Civilization

From the perspective of the Earth, moon landing is a competition between countries. Carrying out manned space projects will also drive the development of basic scientific research and technologies in materials, electronics, machinery, and chemical engineering.

Manned space flight is one of the most complex system engineering projects in human history, involving many high-tech fields, including automatic control, computers, propulsion technology, communication and remote sensing, new energy, new materials, etc. These fields and disciplines are of great significance to promoting a country's industrial development and scientific and technological progress.

For example, although the Apollo moon landing program cost tens of billions of dollars, it also gave birth to and expanded a large number of high-tech industrial groups in the United States, such as liquid fuel rockets, microwave radars, radio guidance, synthetic materials, and computers. In the first 10 years of operation of the Russian Mir space station, 10 rare metal mines and 117 oil veins were discovered, whose value far exceeded the total development and maintenance costs of the space station.

According to incomplete statistics, among the more than 1,000 new materials in my country in recent years, 80% were developed under the guidance of space technology, and more than 2,000 space technology achievements have been transplanted to various sectors of the national economy.

Facts have proven that although manned space flight requires huge investment, the returns are equally high. According to the evaluation results obtained by multiple research institutions in the United States and Europe using different models and methods, every 1 yuan invested in the space industry will generate 7 to 12 yuan in returns.

The manned lunar landing is not just a competition among major powers, or a money-eating beast with no other value. If we broaden our horizons to deep space, the lunar landing is also a springboard for our human exploration of deep space. Landing on the moon and establishing a scientific base on the moon is a prelude to the gradual migration of humans to Mars.

In the past two years, Mars rover missions such as the US Perseverance, China Tianwen, and the United Arab Emirates Hope have been successfully launched and operated. The EU and Russia are also on their way to Mars exploration. Mars exploration has been carried out smoothly. The Zhurong Mars rover has begun patrol monitoring, and the Perseverance rover is also working on Mars: identifying and collecting rock samples. The Hope rover is dedicated to studying and understanding the climate and atmospheric changes on Mars.

If all goes well, these studies will also form the basis for our subsequent manned spacecraft landing on Mars. In the long run, subsequent Mars research work, manned lunar landings, etc., will all be possible preparations for future interstellar immigration to Mars.

The maturity of these detection and control technologies will also make commercial space travel more common. The huge amount of tickets in the pockets of the rich will feed back into the development of deep space exploration. In the future, from near-Earth travel to lunar exploration and then to viewing Mars, interstellar travel may become a popular vacation method for the rich. Driven by these commercial values, the technology of manned spaceflight will also go further.

The ancients said: "He who can reach the sky will be king." After thousands of years of civilization, people today are still as curious and awed by the vast sky as the ancients. However, we have achieved the communication of interstellar probes. If all goes well, manned moon landing will also become a reality in 2030. In the future, interstellar roaming, interstellar immigration, and other deep space explorations will no longer be a matter of imagination or obstacles. We will realize the wishes of ancient and modern humans and become kings by reaching the sky. In the vast galaxy, the fluorescence of human wisdom will continue to shine and continue to leap into the depths of the universe.