Chinese Space Official Seems Unimpressed With NASA's Lunar Gateway (arstechnica.com)

schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black: At a science workshop in Europe this week, Chinese space officials made it clear that they found the concept of NASA Lunar Orbiting Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) to be unimpressive and uninteresting. Moreover, they said that while it appears we will be delaying our landings on the Moon for at least a decade because of LOP-G, they will be focused on getting and building a research station on the surface, right off the bat.

[From a report via Ars Technica:] "Overall, [Pei Zhaoyu, who is deputy director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration], does not appear to be a fan of NASA's plan to build a deep space gateway, formally known as the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, at a near-rectilinear halo orbit. Whereas NASA will focus its activities on this gateway away from the Moon, Pei said China will focus on a 'lunar scientific research station.' Another slide from Pei offered some thoughts on the gateway concept, which NASA intends to build out during the 2020s, delaying a human landing on the Moon until the end of the decade at the earliest. Pei does not appear to be certain about the scientific objectives of such a station, and the deputy director concludes that, from a cost-benefit standpoint, the gateway would have 'lost cost-effectiveness.'"

Comments

Color me unimpressed with their opinion.

[SeaFox]

Their longest manned flight was only 21 hours.

Call me when China puts people on the moon with 1960's rocket tech.

Re:Color me unimpressed with their opinion.

[Richard_at_work]

Actually, their longest so far is 33 days, during the Shenzhou 11 mission in 2916.

The mission you link to, Shenzhou 5, was their first crewed mission - they have orbited two space station since then, with multiple crewed missions.

Re:Color me unimpressed with their opinion.

[Anonymous Coward]

BE-4 is ORSC, but the US has always been more interested in making their engines reliable first and high performance second. The NK33, while impressive, ultimately didn't beat the gas generator F-1's to the moon did they? And how exactly is the YF100 impressive as a first stage engine? The SSME is 2 decades older and has higher ISP at sea level than the YF100 has in vacuum all while having double the thrust and being reusable, is oxidizer rich really intrinsically better? ORSC is also old news, the cool new stuff is full flow staged combustion like the Raptor. That and liquid methane seems to be the way of the future.