"But Wendell Mendell of NASA's office for human exploration at the Johnson Space Center in Houston contends that public efforts will make it to the Moon before commercial endeavours, and cites European and Japanese trips scheduled for the next year."
Yeah, Wendell, keep cheering on those "public efforts." We were on the moon what, 30 years ago? Haven't been back since. And then he cites the success of "foreign" "public efforts." We were way ahead of the curve and now we can only point to the successes of other governments because govt. employees like him seem to be completely content sitting on earth collecting a "public" paycheck.
What a knee-jerk socialist response from our space agency. Instead of promoting a US company's efforts to explore space (NASA's mission), he tries to downplay it -- by pointing to the success other government's are having. What a moron.