I think what you mean to say is that regulations GROW over time.
If you only add regulations but never remove them, eventually you end up with a society where most things are illegal and the only people who can get anything done are wealthy enough to afford to deal with years-long bureaucratic processes.
I don't think letting the richest man in the world do whatever he wants (especially if he's proven to be a bit reckless) is worth winning any race. And it isn't even "a race", there is no actual finish line. China and the US can both be in space and even both go to the moon separately, and both can have perceived wins from that.
Reasonable people can disagree on this, but I don't think that resentment towards the richest man in the world or a perceived need to "put him in his place" is worth self-sabotaging your civilization's position on something as important as space.
Americans may not feel it as keenly, but here in Central Europe, we have a visceral feeling that a new period of wars is upon us. Ukraine, the Near East, Taiwan: everything converging like back in 1938-9. Authoritarians all over the world feel emboldened. And, at the same time, the West is weaker than it was, not least because of loss of industrial capacity. Space is one of the few industries where we still command some advantage, and 2/3rds of that advantage is concentrated in SpaceX.
Yeah, I don't think that sacrificing that advantage to personal dislike of Musk is worth it. Even though I agree that he is obnoxious.
>is worth self-sabotaging your civilization's position on something as important as space.
And yet we can't really be sure that Musk has anything but self interest involved. He's gone all-in on right-wing climate denying politicians. I honestly don't really care what his aspirations are for life on Mars if he's willfully helping to destroy this planet just so he can save some money on his taxes, or whatever short-term goal he thinks supporting right-wing politicians will get him.
Please go read China's GDP and try to understand how it would completely crash if they went to war with the US. We're far too dependent on each other to go to war over anything.
I stopped relying on rationality of humans when it comes to war.
Russia and Ukraine had terrible birth rates before the war and Russia had a clearly inadequate amount of soldiers for occupying a country of that size (only about 200 000, where a million or more would be realistically required). Not very good preconditions for a massive war. Putin went ahead anyway.
GWB's attack on Iraq wasn't a particularly smart action either.
Maybe China can learn from those mistakes. Or maybe Xi feels that his time is slowly coming to an end anyway, and a Heroic Feat is necessary to fix his position in the textbooks of tomorrow.
Wasn't SpaceX founded with Musk's goal of getting mankind to Mars ASAP? Hasn't he made several promises of timelines for unmanned and manned flights to Mars?
The Moon is just a vanity project for both countries. The real race is to be the country capable of putting the most mass into orbit before the war between the US and China starts. China was briefly in the lead a few years ago, until SpaceX singlehandedly squished them like a tiny bug. But the Chinese aren't laying down and accepting defeat, they're hard at work developing Falcon and Starship clones of their own. If America gets too cocky and retards SpaceX's development, China wills overtake America again. Probably in time for their promised invasion of Taiwan.
Okay, if there's "a race", then what is the finish line? What needs to happen for someone to "win"? And what happens to the loser? Does the loser still get to pass the finish line? What award is given for "winning" this "race"? This is not a first-past-the-post game. Superiority in space isn't predicated on someone "getting there first", and if we're talking about military pursuits, then getting there first simply won't win if the competition puts up a weapon 100x more powerful even if it's "second" getting there by a week or a month. China and the US are not at war, and both sides know it would be extremely foolish for either side to engage in a war with each other, so I'm not sure what you really think is going on.
