Helpless To follOw

clipped from www.popularmechanics.com The new budget, announced Monday, seems merely an attempt to disguise the demise of U.S. leadership in space. The president does away with Constellation, its Orion spacecraft, and its Ares I and Ares V boosters. The abrupt cancellation means the U.S. no longer wishes to send its explorers to the frontiers of knowledge and spacefaring skill. We are deliberately choosing to have no better space capability than do Russia, China, or India. During the height of the shuttle program in the 1990s, we launched six or seven shuttles and about 40 astronauts per year into orbit for science and defense purposes. Starting next year, and for the foreseeable future, just four Americans will make it into space annually—as passengers on foreign rockets. Is this a bold new course for the nation? With no ability to launch humans past the ISS, we will watch, helpless to follow, as China pursues its determination to be the next nation to send its explorers into deep space.