>>13373125There's no point to landing anything on the moon, except for image.
If nobody thinks you're going to do it, and you have bigger problems, why the fuck would you do it?
If anything, both China and America really shouldn't be doing anything interplanetary for a long while, given that they have horrendous problems to adress here on earth.
The best strategy would be to slowly develop interplanetary technology without ever going through with any expensive launches. Once the economic incentive is there (asteroid mining), or the price has dropped to much more reasonable levels, then you start sending ships.
The only reason America and China are in this dickwaving contest is because they both want to abolish international space treaties in the future, and want to be able to call dibs on prime real estate. Maybe even a century before it's in any way practical to exploit.
