Which country will be the next to send humans to the Moon?

Why we chose it

Two months ago Artemis II flew four astronauts around the Moon and home — the first crewed lunar flight since 1972, and still no one has *walked* there in over fifty years — and this market kept trading, because flying past doesn't count: it's about whose boots touch down next, before 2031. That's the race the board is pricing: United States 59, China 42, everybody else a rounding error, the two adding to just past a hundred — the market saying somebody gets there, coin flip which flag.

The US path is Artemis III, nominally 2028, a relay race of contractors whose lander programs have already had explosive setbacks. China's path is stated with unusual bluntness for a space program: "we will spare no effort" for a landing by 2030, with the Lanyue lander's uncrewed rehearsal pencilled for 2028-29. America is ahead on hardware flown; China is ahead on schedule credibility, having hit essentially every date it has announced. A superpower Moon race, decided by which bureaucracy slips less.