[Mulder]

Really no surprise here. America is on the decline. This is yet another example.

If you think the budget cuts are bad now, just wait until the boomers start retiring and voting to maintain and increase their current benefits. Those selfish fools have run up $8 trillion in debt, to be paid by the grandchildren. So what's a few more trillion? So what if we lose the space race? The important thing is that gramps makes his tee-off time and gets his cocktail of drugs.

Maybe the chinese will give an American a token ride to Mars 50 years from now, if they can find one that isn't obese or dumb as a load of bricks. Probably not.

[RightWhale]

If the US would withdraw from the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and open a land office for registration of property claims this country would take off so fast and go so far that the rest of the dumb world would wonder where we went.

[John Locke]

I fear you are right. NASA made six manned space voyages to the moon, and then shut the whole program down. Ming China did one better: they made seven blue ocean voyages (under Admiral Cheng Ho, of course), and then shut the whole program down.

They gave up the dominion of the world; we have given up dominion of the Solar System. And for what? For an empire of debt.