Resolves yes if China lands a person on Mars before the USA does. The person has to set foot on Mars for it to qualify.
1,000
1.00American brain is either busy banning IVF and lab grown meat or busy with conspiracy theories (a la RFK) or busy protesting for Gaza and BLM
only probable way for the us to win is to get an AI assist
@Bayesian OK, it's almost guaranteed to resolve YES but luckily I am a psychopath and will not mind taking your manas for cheap.
@a2bb No! But I don't think it is so hard to land on Mars. China just needs to competently follow the USA's plans, which the USA itself is too lazy to actually carry out for itself.
@jim Mars is notoriously the hardest planet to land softly on.
Not enough atmosphere to do sufficient aerodynamic braking or parachuting.
Too much atmosphere to ignore entirely like the Moon or Mercury.
Too much gravity to make thruster landing easy (again like the moon) combined with soft and dusty surface that is easily perturbed by thrusters.
This is why all the rovers landed on Mars were done in incredibly strange ways compared to other planets. Such as the giant bouncy capsule that Spirit and Opportunity used (out of the question for living occupants), or the supersonic parachute plus sky crane solution that Curiosity and Perseverance used.
None of these options are applicable directly to human passengers.
I also take issue with the notion that the reason we haven't set foot on Mars is laziness. What scientific goals would be possible only by sending humans to Mars? Are those goals worth the drastically increased cost, complexity, risk, and sacrifice?
@Pykess sure, substitute laziness with not seeing the point, I.e. lack of motivation. Same thing.
China will conquer the stars, USA will wonder how it fumbled the ball.
@jim It's not laziness; it's corruption and institutional incompetence. And the one true island of hustle (SpaceX) is being forced to waste time calculating the odds of giving a dolphin a concussion.