More 'change': China plans manned Moon landings as U.S. rents seats on Russian rockets

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Investors Business Daily:

Americans better get used to it: Watching China's rockets and astronauts launching from Earth to explore new frontiers in space, near and very far.

With the U.S. space shuttle fleet now fully retired and decommissioned by the Obama administration, NASA must rent $62 million seats on Russian rockets to get Americans up to the International Space Station. And no farther.

On Thursday, the emerging superpower of China, flush with cash from its booming economy and overseas investments, released a major policy paper, announcing far more ambitious goals for its own national space explorations.

It is already constructing its own space station, experimenting with robot spaceships and is expected to launch more crews in the new year, possibly its first female astronaut, just eight years after the first Chinese flew in orbit. This plus ambitious plans for new rockets. fuels and even moon orbiters.

But the big news from China's new white paper was the revelation of plans to land crews on the Moon for detailed lengthy explorations, possibly late this decade. The Moon has not seen new human footprints in 39 years, since the last U.S. lunar mission, Apollo 17 in December 1972.

Bush administration plans to return U.S. astronauts to the Moon to construct a permanent base and explore for mineral deposits, among other things, were scrapped by Obama, ostensibly for financial reasons. This has resulted in thousands of recent layoffs among Florida's highly-skilled space industry workers.

Although Obama's specific long-term goals for an American space program appear muddled at best -- he has, for instance, talked vaguely of someday landing on an asteroid for some reason -- clearly the U.S. will be incapable of launching its own astronauts into space for several years due to development lags in spacecraft and launch vehicles.

Additionally, given the grim, limited outlook for new adventures, the U.S. astronaut corps has dwindled to less than half its original size.