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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Hard to say and kind of irrelevant. The ideal scenario is that they both make it. In fact, if China and Russia could do it, that'd be even better.

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It's not irrelevant to me ... I've been a fan of NASA since I was little and clearly remember watching Apollo 11 in awe. I also remember wondering why the Russians could land people on the ground be we had to have a (dangerous) splash down. I guess what I'm saying is that "I'll cheer for all the participants" (and you left out India) but watching the U.S. legislature decimate NASA's funding in combination with NASA's lack of "big feature" projects leaves me wondering about their future.

As an aside, I used to have an E.P. with Kennedy's "New Ocean" speech on one side and key communications between Houston and the spacecraft on the other side as well as a set of cool charts showing the entire flight's trajectory.

Water splashdown is preferable because you don't have to deal with obstacles. Russia simply didn't have the blue-water navy to perform recovery, so they capitalized on their large landmass instead.

I'm curious, why is it better if Russia and China do it first?

Because then space exploration would be a political issue again, and we'd have another space race (hopefully)

I believe @melling implied that it would be better if Russia and China could also get humans to Mars.

The U.S. is just so far ahead in terms of space technology. I am sure one day other countries will catch up, but it is going to be awhile.

It's a matter of will, not necessarily of tech. The US has shown it lacks the will to achieve its former dominance.

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