Sept. 27, 2007 —It took years for the United States to recover from the shock of being bested in space by the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957, and the flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin just 42 months later, but the country recovered in time to clinch the grand prize in the Cold War space race by landing a man on the moon.
This time, the United States may not be so lucky.
"I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are," NASA administrator Michael Griffin said during a luncheon speech in Washington D.C., last week. "I think when that happens, Americans will not like it, but they will just have to not like it."
Fifty years after space exploration debuted with the stunning launch of Sputnik, the goal of many of the world's space programs, including NASA, is to build a base on the moon. Unlike the first lunar venture, however, momentum in the United States is sluggish.
Most of NASA's budget remains committed to operation of the space shuttles, which were returned to service after a second deadly accident in 2003 for the sole purpose of finishing construction of the International Space Station.
See Sputnik's history in rare video. Get more Discovery News video here.
By the time the outpost is complete in 2010 — barring additional delays — the United States, which has spent billions of dollars on the program, will not be able to fly there, or fund the vast number of science experiments originally planned to be conducted aboard. Many will not even be launched.
If Congress agrees to lift a trade embargo on Russia, enacted to suppress weapons proliferation to Iran, NASA plans to buy rides on Soyuz rockets for a handful of U.S. astronauts each year to live and work aboard the station. A current exemption from the trade ban expires in 2011.
Another option would be to buy space transport services commercially, if one or more of the entrepreneurial enterprises in development is successful.
