China launches a bunch of obsolete rockets with relatively small capacities. Long march 3 has half the capacity of a Falcon 9, Long March 2 is about one seventh the payload capacity.

They should be justly proud of their robotic lunar missions though.

Go look at how much payload by weight was launched by China. Or how many different payloads.

> It has a mission to bring lunar rock back to earth for the first time since the 70s.

Yes its a fine mission, but its a mission that is not outside of the capability of others. There are simply many space missions that could be done.

Yes, China is doing things and the are moving fast, but your prediction and text were still over the top.

That wasn’t my prediction. It was from another poster.

Opps. US passed China with the last few flights. Counting SpaceX and Electron in the US stats.

And SpaceX has another 3 launches planned for December (SXM-7, NROL-108 & Turksat 5A). Although the last one is on Dec 31, so could easily slip into next year.

Why do the US numbers include electron?

Because the statistics are based on the nationality of company/agency that designs and builds the launch vehicle, not the launch site. So even though Soyuz launches from Kazakhstan and French Guiana, it is counted as a Russian launch since a Russian company (Energia) designed and built the rocket. Similarly, even though a lot of Electron launches are from New Zealand, the company that builds Electron is ultimately US-headquartered/US-controlled. (Rocket Lab was originally founded in New Zealand, but they moved their HQ and parent company to the US so are now considered a US company rather than a New Zealand one.)