perfidy

It is embarrassing being an American sometimes. We're too lazy to expend the effort to stay in first place, unwilling to be bettered. It's like living on a cultural yo-yo.

If all China wants is a flags and footprints mission - more power to them. But what about after that?

For the long-run I'll lay my money on free enterprise and a horde of free citizens milling about doing the best they can for themselves.

Which isn't as cut and dried as having a central committee sit down and plan everything but it has as it's advantage that it seems to work better.

I get the impression that if NASA was completely disbanded and new agency created from scratch, they would get back to the moon and beyond faster.

We don't NEED a space agency to get us to the moon. Greed would do the trick.

"Whereas Congress has determined that a US owned manned lunar station is in the national interest, be it resolved that the Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay, and payment is hereby authorized, to the first American owned firm to place 30 Americans on the moon and maintain them there continuously for a period of not less than 36 months, the sum of Twenty Billion dollars, this payment to be free of taxes."

It would work. We only need to get the legislature concerned once to enable the act and it only requires verification not a constant inflow of funding.