In recent months, it has begun dawning on US lawmakers that, absent significant intervention, China will land humans on the Moon before the United States can return there with the Artemis Program.
So far, legislators have yet to take meaningful action on this—a $10 billion infusion into NASA’s budget this summer essentially provided zero funding for efforts needed to land humans on the Moon this decade. But now a subcommittee of the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology has begun reviewing the space agency’s policy, expressing concerns about Chinese competition in civil spaceflight.
This is entirely inaccurate.
ISS does not use cryogenics for propulsion. Why? Because cryogenic fuel transfer is crazy hard. Starship cryogenic demonstration was just moving fuel between two tanks in the same vehicle… a trick NASA mastered and surpassed with the Shuttle external tank.
For better or worse, both China and the US view space primarily as a means to demonstrate dominance and prove technological superiority. Antarctica is significantly easier to get to, has way less tactical utility, and seems otherwise irrelevant to the conversation.