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This is good, there should always be friendly competition between Nations to drive Space Exploration. I hope this lights a bigger fire under the ass of the current US Administration and NASA to push ahead harder, faster and farther. The US doesn't know how lucky they are to have SpaceX and Musk.

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SpaceX is no doubt cool. Nonetheless we're discussing China landing its first rover on a planet NASA's been flying a helicopter around for the last month. I mean, both are great accomplishments, but if you have to treat it as a competition and pick a winner...

Not to pour water on your statement, I'd say that the rate of change counts more. Nailing your first landing attempt on a powered descent (rocket-crate equivalent) is no mean feat. I'm actually pleasantly surprised given the high failure rate of Mars missions.

I'd agree rate of change counts more if both parties were at comparable technology levels. When you're still playing catchup there's a lot of opportunities to take certain engineering shortcuts.

100% agree, like hiring Nazi scientists to kickstart your space program.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

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