China vs Sputnik. Where's USA in moon race?

Does anyone have any info on what's going on with the alleged new moon race? Has USA areospace been reduced to foot soldiers with rifles? Where's USAF?!! Where's the money gone for the space program? Is National Security right now being fought with bullets, Stealth satellites, UFOs, or what?

I realize that the military industrial complex in league with Fedgov has massive inertia, huge bureocracies, and takes a lot of time to do anything, but if Detroit can't make cars anymore due to labor unions, how the heck are we going to win the space race?

What's going on with taking the high ground ("High Frontier" Arthur C Clark) for the coming wars? And why are we still flying the few remaining prototypes of the space shuttle? How lame is that!!? Where's my Aurora? Why are we welded to idea of sending mass up at great expense and then bringing it down again? Why do we have to hire Russia?

What's wrong with this picture?

China vs Sputnik. Where's USA in moon race?nortan

What is wrong with your picture? Pretty much everything.

For one thing there is no such race. China has a well declared space program which it is pursuing for years without the US public even noticing. They did not throw it down as a gauntlet to the US. It is simply a national training program for their aerospace engineers modeled after the great successes of the US and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. China is a great nation (whether you want to hear that or not) and it has every right to pursue education programs for their technical advantage and national pride. And so are we. That we do way less relative to GDP than China does is not China's fault. It's ours. We are the ones wasting trillions of dollars on foreign invasions.