Time for a wake-up call

Even if NASA gets everything it's asking for right now, as things stand, China will beat us back to the Moon.

Aside from the economic consequences- China having a virtual monopoly on helium-3, for example (an amazingly efficient energy source rare on Earth, but abundant on the Moon)- we are not going to like it if the Chinese leave us in their dust in space.

Part of the reason for the lack of urgency in this country is that comparatively few Americans know that we're in a race with the Chinese back to the Moon. The rest is that there are an awful lot of Americans not old enough to remember what it felt like when the Russians beat us into orbit with Sputnik I, and in getting the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into space. It took years for us to recover from the national trauma- and for our international prestige to recover as well. In fact, it took the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to do the trick.

If the Chinese get there first, those who oppose going back to the Moon now will, for the most part, be demanding the political heads of the leaders who failed to do what was necessary to beat them. And the time will come when our energy bills will show the consequences of that failure, too.

But for a moment, just imagine a world in which the leading scientific and technological power is, and is perceived to be, not the United States, but China.

The picture is of the planned U.S. Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). At present, it'll be ready a year after the Chinese plan to land on the Moon. The new heavy-lift rocket that would take it there will be ready later still.

UPDATE: Chinese space officials said on April 5 that the 2017 mission will be robotic, and that the first emphasis of their manned space program will be an orbital space station.

This is still a race- if we choose to make it one.