A few days ago I expressed my strong disagreement with the Obama Administration’s gutting of the U.S. space program to go back to the moon. I believe the decision puts the U.S. further down the path of national decline.

In an excellent column by Charles Krauthammer today, I was reminded that I missed one of the most disturbing results of this decision. By the end of 2010 we will have no U.S. manned space program. We will be earth bound. Russia has agreed to ferry astronauts from other countries, including the U.S., into low-earth orbit until the end of 2012. The space race that we won under JFK and Nixon is now being conceded to Russia and China.

Krauthammer writes, “Today the manned space program will die for want of $3 billion a year – 1/300th of last year’s stimulus package with its endless make-work projects that will leave not a trace on the national consciousness… Fifty years ago Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it.”