The volume of water it would take to cover an area of acre to a depth of 1 foot. That's 43560 cubic feet, 325,851 gallons, or 1,233,481.8 liters

As noted in the other comment, this isn't the common mechanical friction. It's the same "friction" of the moon's gravity causing the earth's rotation to slow down at a barely perceptible rate.

That's sort of misleading, as China's first crewed flight was 2003, 20 years ago. The article references the 1992 adoption of a strategy. That'd be like saying the US crewed spaceflight program started July 29, 1958, at the founding of NASA, or even March 3, 1915, if you consider the founding of NACA.

There's clearly something going on. Perhaps the military contractors are looking for something to replace the endless middle east wars? I'm 100% sure there are people in this sub more than willing to amplify the rhetoric. The US space program grew out of military missile programs, starting with von Braun, and continuing to this day through Boeing. Boeing itself bloated to its current dominance by buying up McDonnell Douglas‎, North American Aviation‎, Rocketdyne, Hughes Aircraft Company, Hawker De Havilland Aerospace, and a couple dozen more.

What, exactly, is demonizing about this story? It gives context for current events.

What's the deal with demonizing China so much? Are people buying into some kind of warmongering narrative?

deployable spike strips

You've touched on something important, though. Who defines what "success" means? If your definition of success is "what people who have a lot of money say is success", and "having a lot of money" is a marker for being in the class of "successful" people, then yes.

People whose lives align with the definition of success will certainly be more likely to succeed. But at some point we've hit a circularity, where success is defined as what successful people achieve.