US Falling Behind in the Moon Race
America’s road back to the moon is getting rougher, and NASA’s leaders are hinting that more delays could mean that the next humans to set foot on the moon might not be U.S. astronauts.
Three years ago, the Bush administration’s “Vision for Space Exploration” called for manned lunar landings “as early as 2015″ and “no later than 2020.”
The early target is already history. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told Congress that the Ares rocket and the Orion crew vehicle, the system being developed to fly humans to the moon, won’t even be ready to fly in Earth orbit until 2015. Read more
