no living creatures to cause it to rot
Soon termites will evolve for space environment. On a serious note this does seem cool. The amount of satellites going to burn like disposable starlink ones will be an issue. This prototype is small, but this would be good for cubesats.
The amount of money spent on Apollo was insane. A reduced budget should have been sufficient. It's just been weighted down by shit cost-plus contracts and the abomination that is SLS.
The fear of China here is that they are basically single handedly their closest competitor. They're the only other nation thats managed a Mars Rover landing, building space station, and have their own plans for Moon and Mars with taikonauts( astronaut equivalent) on the ground in the future.