It's nice to see progress in space exploration. I saw the landing footage and is beautiful. Congratulations for a nice achievement to the people working on this project
I've already head national "security" experts talk of "hostile Chinese action on the moon" (without specifying further) and "Chinese efforts to control cislunar space" (again without clarifying what that would involve).
Further, citing the need to counter China the US has announced plans to send military satellites to "patrol" the Earth-Moon L2 point (a surveillance satellite as well as an ASAT capable satellite).
In other words, the US is well on its way to bring war to the Moon.
Maybe not "coordinated" but they do have some collaboration with Italian, French, Swedish and Pakistani teams on this one.
Chang'e 7 has Egyptian/Bahraini, Italian, Swiss, Thai, Russian and an international lunar group's payloads.
The Wolf Amendment makes it impossible for NASA to cooperate with China at all, so a competitive stance is really the best we can hope for (the worse alternative bring an outright adversarial one), unless the ESA can wiggle a stabilising middle path between the two sides.
> Without clarifying what that would involve
I imagine ASAT weapons around L2 would fit that bill!
Sure, but so far it is only American weapons going there, which doesn't really explain what Chinese actions the weapons are supposed to "defend" against.
Like, once someone else has sent a weapon to L2 it is easy to motivate sending your own, but the US is currently bootstrapping itself into sending the first one basically by pretending someone else already beat them to it.
Their own justification almost entirely is based on "what if" someone is doing exactly what they are trying to do. It's not even particularly subtle, even if you dress it up as debris removal. Which makes no sense in itself.
And no-one to give the drill a bit of a wiggle if it's stuck.
I'd kill for a fully detailed machined metal scale model (but I know I couldn't afford it: edit: actually, 500 yuan ish from Taobao, perhaps not fully detailed, but I'm tempted).