When Empires Decline

Here's a bit from a BBC report that gives a hint that the US is in decline:

President Barack Obama has cancelled the American project designed to take humans back to the Moon.

The Constellation programme envisaged new rockets and a new crewship called Orion to put astronauts on the lunar surface by 2020.

But in his 2011 budget request issued on Monday, Mr Obama said the project was too costly, "behind schedule, and lacking in innovation".

US space agency Nasa has already spent $9bn (£5.6bn) on the programme.

The president said Constellation was draining resources from other US space agency activities. He plans instead to turn to the private sector for launch services.

When I was a kid JFK announced in 1961 that the US would get to the moon before the end of the decade. Sure enough, in 1969 it landed on the moon. That's back when the whole infrastructure for a moon shot had to be built and most of the technology developed. Today NASA has all kinds of infrastructure and lots of technology available, and the US can't get back to the moon 50 years later? That makes no sense except that in the 1960s the US had a dynamic leader who pushed the country. Today the country has a "pragmatic" leader who is busy trying to make deals and cut corners and find the easy way out, so nothing is really possible anymore. Pitiful.