I hope they release a video of the return. That is something I wish the CNSA and gov would do with their launches/landings. I know a major reason is to keep the US/the West as in the dark as possible (and to keep any failures more hidden to avoid giving the West shit to make fun of). But seeing launches is always fun to see, and even only seeing the successful landings would be cool.
Though I will say that I was hoping that SpaceX being so wildly open about sharing the explosions/failures would lead to other space orgs (private and national) lean into showing similar. As they are able to show progress over time, and that can be inspiring to the public and more specifically younger folks. Shows that mistakes/errors (or even just really bad luck with weather) are not the end of things as long as something is learned and new things are tried. It is like the only thing that I have liked about Musk with regards to SpaceX.
Basically all other private for-profit companies and government agencies panic about it and don’t attempt stuff as often. Which leads to shit like the Boeing Starliner being less real world testing (and even more embarrassing). At least gov orgs I can understand due to extra fear of tax payers freaking out about costs. But the costs wouldn’t be as bad if so much more fucking money is put into the military industrial complex (in the US at least). Tax payers wouldn’t be anywhere as upset about space failures if more of that mic money was also used for helping real people.
I just want to see as much footage from all nations and launch companies as possible. It would be awesome to see what they are all trying these days. With the SpaceX boosters showing that reusable options can very much work. The others are able to more easily push for making their own. The moment that the first Falcon landed successfully, it showed that the massive waste of so much money on SLS and how playing it “safe” via bloated companies like Boeing really was. If any nation is likely to really move fast, then China would be the one to close the gap (and hopefully get ahead as it would force the US to actually fund wild ideas).
It really is inspiring to see this stuff, and I agree regarding showing failures as well. It gives people a more realistic idea of the challenges involved. China has the opportunity to use space as a big national vision for technological advancement. This is a frontier that we’re just starting to explore, and it’s at the bleeding edge of our technological advancement. There’s just something that calls to us collectively in the idea of establishing a foothold somewhere new.
There’s a huge opportunity with the moon base China’s planning in 2030s. I imagine it’ll get a huge number of people excited to go into STEM fields and could really kickstart a new space race where we actually start making serious outposts on the moon. When the US did their moon landing, they had no further vision beyond just planting their flag and going home. I really hope China will use the base as a start of a program to create permanent presence on the moon.
There’s so much that could be done from there. If manufacturing can be set up to mine and process resources on site, then moon could act as the gateway to the rest of the solar system. Launching spacecraft from the moon is way easier than launching from Earth, and eventually it would even be possible to build a space elevator there. Since surface gravity is low, the engineering requirements for constructing a lunar elevator system can be met using materials and technology already available. At that point, sending stuff to orbit becomes extremely cheap. This would facilitate construction of large habitats in space, and space ships that are designed to stay in orbit permanently.
