Quote Originally Posted by Tyndmyr View Post
Thus the "playing on this level." China and India are playing catch up with stuff we did many decades ago, the EU has a launch tempo that's pretty light(their historical launch data doesn't list anything after 2020), Blue Origin is a tourist thing.

There's a lot of programs out there, but SpaceX and the US gov are way ahead of the rest of these. The Starlink sats they've launched alone account for over a third of mankind's satellite cluster, and the US gov makes up most of the rest. They're the huge players in the market.
How many probes has SpaceX sent to the moon and returned samples? How many probes to L1? Or to Mars? China is currently building a space station. The core module went up last year. Two more modules are going up this year. In 2021, China launched more rockets than the US, and that includes all US launch providers, not just SpaceX.

I am always surprised by how little western observers know about China's space program. I don't know if its a matter of national pride or people sticking their head in the sand but China is passing us, in particular when you look at Lunar Exploration.