China will take over-----wake up America-- Rick/Mitt make fun of lunar colony!

Fred Mushel says:
January 30, 2012 at 5:05 pm
As of today, the only nation with a (five year) plan for space exploration is China. They are prepared to take the steps that the former USSR and the USA took 50 years ago. Today, both Russia and the USA have so much debt, and such a poor economy, that we can’t afford to maintain our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways, and airports.
Unlike both the Russians and the USA in the 1960’s, the Chinese today are funding their space program with money mostly from the USA (US consumers buying millions of Chinese manufactured goods).
NASA’s budget has always been (after the success of Apollo 11) on the decline, while the Pentagon budget has skyrocketed. It seems we Americans have no problems spending billions (trillions) of dollars on wars, rather than spending the money on improving the human race. The low budget that was passed in 1972 for the development of the Space Shuttle led to design compromises that ultimately came back to bite us (Challenger & Columbia accidents). And after the Challenger accident we mothballed the west coast launch facility that cost $3 Billion to construct and became so risk adverse, that the shuttle wouldn’t be allowed to launch any more commercial satellites, thus giving Europe’s Ariane rocket to become the world’s most used rocket for launching commercial satellites in to space.
In 2004, President Bush announced his space policy of returning to the moon and then going on to Mars, but neither his administration or Congress satisfactorily funded the project which led us to developing a dead end $9 Billion Ares I rocket with all sorts of engineering problems like SRB thrust oscillation, and a second stage engine (the J2X) that could not launch a fully loaded Orion spacecraft that would be capable of traveling beyond low Earth orbit. And knowing this, the then NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin, continued to pursue an unsustainable project. NASA should have upon learning of the Ares I problems, dropped the project and started developing a different rocket, be it the DIRECT (Jupiter) rocket proposals, the Ares V or the now Congressionally mandated SLS rocket.
Today, as Mr. Hale states, the US space program is in shambles because of the political atmosphere in the Congress and in the White House. The problem with a Democracy is that every four, six or eight years, the space program is changed dramatically, some times for the better, but lately for the worse. China, (as the USSR did), will remain on a steady course, whereas the USA had dumped the Saturn V rocket with three left over and ready to launch vehicles. We started from scratch to build the Space Shuttle which was mainly designed to construct and service a space station, but for most of its time was waiting for the Congress to fund a space station. Then, after finally building one, we dumped the shuttle just after the space station construction was completed. We now have to depend on the Russians, Europeans and Japanese to supply and maintain the station, and depend totally on Russia to transport our own astronauts to the space station, which was mostly built with US tax payers dollars.
The Russians have never had a gap in their human space flight program (except for accidents), while the US had a six-year gap between Apollo and Shuttle, and today perhaps another six-year gap. The “winning of the Cold War” has made this country and our elected officials complacent and not willing to take the risks or spend adequate money on our space program, that ultimately made the US the most space capable and space experienced nation on the Earth. From now on, it looks like the Chinese will take over that position from both Russia and the USA.
God help us all.