I hadn't noticed that, but it is interesting yeah. I have to assume cultural differences must play a role here. I don't know Chinese culture; perhaps it's more modest? Perhaps they'd find celebration in mission control untimely? Perhaps putting things in space is jut not as fundamental to Chinese culture, so people there treat it more like "just a job"?

The USA is a nation built by explorers that colonized frontier after frontier, and the space race is a legendary two decades where they explored the final one, pulled ahead of the USSR "not because it was easy but because it was hard", planted a flag in the Moon beating their nemesis in the process, and overall reaffirmed in their ethos this mythical American exceptionalism that's so often talked about. I think space still carries this mysticism to it in the USA; there's a lot of badass jobs out there, but none quite as badass as being an astronaut. There's a lot of hard jobs that require incredible planning and precision out there, but none quite like rocket science. There's a lot of science and engineering agencies, but none quite like NASA. All these have "cool" and/or "hero" status to them in the USA psyche.

Hollywood has certainly spread this sort of sentiment around the world (especially the "Westen" world), but I wonder how true this is in China. I will say though, there's a lot of jobs that don't awaken strong passions that are still done very well in the USA, so I can only imagine, even if they're not jumping up in elation, it'd still be possible for the Chinese to be at least competitive with the USA on matters of space. As an aside, I also wonder what makes Chinese people feel that pride, celebrate that brotherhood and passion, and if they perhaps thinks it's weird that the USA doesn't feeling the same way about whatever that is.

You can’t really judge other cultures by their outward happiness. That’s really just a US thing. I think what it all comes down to is the probabilistic numbers game - how many clever people do you have hacking at various problems. Some % will succeed, and the larger the population the more results will emerge from it. That’s China’s fundamental advantage. They can still fuck it up though with poor political structure, as they did for several hundred years up until the 2000s, and may yet revert to under Xi Jinping. But they’ll have to really screw things up to lose the numbers game.

Most people from other countries think Americans are over the top on this.

Does completing a space station not count as success? Also, here's a video of this launch, people look pretty happy to be honest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xcgT93s08o

Have you seen what China has become in the past 2 decades? The technological growth and development is unlike anything ever seen in the history of mankind. Not only are you wrong. You are gravely wrong. The likelihood of China surpassing the US in the space race is actually quite high.

> During a Chinese launch I see super strict hierarchy. People looking damn serious. How can you ever succeed without having motivated , out of the box thinking people.

first, some "out of the box thinking" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZyJdxzjGN4