Why would China want to put a woman on the moon? am I missing something?
And the Chinese would get to beat the Americans at the American's own stated goal. America's programme is called the Artemis Program - Artemis being Apollo's sister - and the programme's first goal is to put a female and a person of colour on the Moon ASAP.
It would be a clear-cut victory for China over the USA, all the while being perfectly in keeping with China's socialist beliefs and past activities.
And China has several competent female astronauts (Wang Yaping and Liu Yang are experienced).
So, am I missing something?
Sending a woman (or a person of color for that matter) to the moon has no scientific benefits unless the mission is framed as building a long-term colony there (where both men and women could participate) for example.
You enumerated several political reasons but no scientific ones as I understand. Hence my question.
Therefore, the logic goes, each side needed to frequently show off their advanced technology whilst avoiding showing any secrets: ostensibly civilian space exploration serves that purpose rather well.
I've read a similar argument for spying - that countries begrudgingly want a certain amount of espionage to take place in peacetime. This is because it's better for everyone to know the extent of each other's military capabilities than to accidentally start an arms race out of a misplaced belief that their rivals are suddenly increasing development of weapons.
I was born in the post-USSR world, and am also British rather than American, so perhaps take my perception of the Cold War with a pinch of salt. :)
China putting a woman on the moon would be a little embarrassing to the US, but people would forget about it in a week or two. It wouldn't prove China's technological superiority, just some vague sense of moral superiority. And there are a lot cheaper ways to send that message.
What significant difference does it make if we put a woman (or woman of color) on the moon first vs putting another white man on the moon. [with modern technology].
I could think of a few positive reasons to do this, but it shouldn't be the main driving force of competition.
If the goal is “but X can do Y too” then there are already women astronauts so goal achieved I guess.
70% of the US is either female, POC, or both. Enticing that mind bogglingly huge demographic into STEM has massive utility for this country. Evidence shows that people aspire more easily to be like people they resemble, and the moonshot that inspired "Whitey On The Moon" didn't do that job well.
What would you pay to add 10 million more engineers and scientists to the trajectory of this nation over the next couple decades?
The US is I guess 51% women, maybe 20–30% Hispanic, maybe 15% African-American, and so on. Then you just need to put one of every identity on the Moon in the next decade.
Because surely you didn’t think that the average person of a sociological minority identify themselves as “not a white [straight] male”.
China in general want to go to the moon.