Where were you when the Chinese landed on the moon?

Will a descendent of this Chinese rocket put an astronaut on the moon in 2021?

I find myself imagining this:

It’s September 2021. The world is watching as a Taikonaut—a Chinese astronaut—steps onto the lunar surface. It’s an incredible view, which I watch on my high-definition video glasses. I see it in real time, except for the 2 1/2 second delay to get the signal from the moon.

The Chinese lander is on the Sea of Tranquility which—aside for the boulder field Neil Armstrong jumped over to land the Eagle in 1969—is a pretty good place to first land on the moon. In the background is the original Apollo 11 site, with everything looking as it did nearly 60 years earlier.

The Americans can’t deny the accomplishment and praise the landing. They also downplay it somewhat as a stunt. And they note that NASA has sent some pretty impressive robots to the surface of several of Jupiter’s moons in recent years.

But there’s no denying that America in space isn’t what it once was. Earlier in 2021, India sent a pair of its astronauts around the moon in a free-return trajectory. Meanwhile, America continues in earth orbit, on rented spacecraft.

Back in 2017, one of the private American spacecraft failed with several tourists aboard. Now, even stricter safety standards were in place. The result: very few American flights, and those flights are dominated by safety procedures. This is similar to how we’ve been running the last of the shuttle flights—the key activity of the shuttle is to inspect itself and make sure the protective tiles are secure.

I don’t know if the American public will be upset when the Chinese land. Or whether they’ll wonder why we just gave up on leaving earth orbit. Maybe they just won’t care. That will say something about America and Americans.