(((Here comes everybody... because moon rockets are, after all, a forty-year old technology.)))
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/08/AR2008070803185.html
Link: U.S. Finds It's Getting Crowded Out There - washingtonpost.com.
U.S. Finds It's Getting Crowded Out There
Dominance in Space Slips as Other Nations Step Up Efforts
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 9, 2008; Page A01
China plans to conduct its first spacewalk in October. The European Space Agency is building a roving robot to land on Mars. India recently launched a record 10 satellites into space on a single rocket.
Space, like Earth below, is globalizing. And as it does, America's long-held superiority in exploring, exploiting and commercializing "the final frontier" is slipping away, many experts believe.
Although the United States remains dominant in most space-related fields – and owns half the military satellites currently orbiting Earth – experts say the nation's superiority is diminishing, and many other nations are expanding their civilian and commercial space capabilities at a far faster pace.
"We spent many tens of billions of dollars during the Apollo era to purchase a commanding lead in space over all nations on Earth," said NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin, who said his agency's budget is down by 20 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 1992.
"We've been living off the fruit of that purchase for 40 years and have not . . . chosen to invest at a level that would preserve that commanding lead."
In a recent in-depth study of international space competitiveness, the technology consulting firm Futron of Bethesda found that the globalizing of space is unfolding more broadly and quickly than most Americans realize. "Systemic and competitive forces threaten U.S. space leadership," company president Joseph Fuller Jr. concluded.
Six separate nations and the European Space Agency are now capable of sending sophisticated satellites and spacecraft into orbit – and more are on the way....
