SOS: Is The Pentagon Losing the U.S. to China?

..."The current outdated and slow approach to technological innovation could eventually lead China to overtake the US in space, among other areas. NASA, for instance, has spent more than $23 billion to build the single-use Space Launch System (SLS), as a replacement for its Space Shuttle program. Announced back in 2010, the project has been delayed by more than five years so far and is already obsolete, in addition to being, at $4.1 billion per launch, almost prohibitively expensive to deploy. By comparison, China has been advancing in space by copying the commercial space sector, specifically the American one. The Long March 2C rocket that China launched in the summer of 2019 for the first time had parts -- the grid fins -- that were "virtually identical" to those that are used to steer the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. A year after that test, according to Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, "China's main space contractor revealed plans to develop the ability to reuse its Long March 8 booster, which is powered by kerosene fuel, the same type of power that fuels SpaceX rockets. By 2025, Chinese officials said, this rocket would be capable of landing on a sea platform, like SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster does."