>Which in turn would require dozens of test flights to get that capability.

Of course there will be test fights involved in any program. No reason why it would take dozens. Several, like the Artemis program, is probably what we should expect.

>NASA is still close to a decade away from being able to duplicate the Apollo 17 mission.

NASA is not trying to duplicate Apollo. If they were they would be much closer.

I feel like at this point we are saying fairly similar things. There are engineering challenges that China is likely capable of solving in the medium term. We agree it's not necessarily easy but it also doesn't require any new breakthroughs.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Apollo. But there's no reason the Chinese can't basically follow the Apollo playbook while adding improvements from the last 50 years of spaceflight. You keep talking as if they are so far away. They have landed on the moon and returned already. They just need to scale it up to include humans, which involves solved engineering problems. It's not easy or cheap but it's well within their mid term capacities.

I'm really not sure what dozens of flights they would need. They know everything we learned in Gemini and more. They have an operational space station. All the remaining challenges are solved engineering problems that they just need to throw a bit of time, money, and effort at. It'll probably be a bit longer than 2027 but you are talking like they are in their infancy when they have a pretty well developed space program at this point.

Not even close. They slow down just enough to start reentry. Generally around 1% of their orbital velocity. They lose the other 99% by using the atmosphere.