The American manned space program is at a turning point. Is it at the dawn of a new day or in the dusk of an old dream?

After a full half century of daring innovation, adventure and leadership, the program's future is in the hands of a small number of men and women who have their minds on other things. The thrust of a decision comes from President Barack Obama but implementation is up to Congress. The questions here are: when will they get serious about it and how long before they realize the competition may eat our lunch in the meantime? If history is any guide, they will wait until panic sets in.

They always do.

Granted, the American economy is in tatters and a short-sighted view puts the real future of the space enterprise on the back burner "until things get better." That has always been the government's litany, good times or bad. The only thing they've added to it recently is to mumble something about "Private Enterprise" taking over. Yeah. Right.

In the summer of 2009, a commission headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO, Norman Augustine, told Obama that the plan outlined by the Bush Administration to return to the moon in the 2020s is technically viable, but fiscally impossible. Augustine's commission recommended alternate, less ambitious programs spread over a longer time period, but emphasized that no meaningful effort can proceed without more funding, restoration of funds cut away from NASA in the past and without assured long-term funding for the years ahead. Historically, Congress has kept NASA on a two-year funding leash when any real Research and Development needs at least five years. Not knowing what monies could be guaranteed has often kept projects at a snail's pace.

So Obama and the Congress are faced with either committing more money to America's signature technology or allowing discovery and innovation of the past fifty years to fade behind us. It appears that the president will scrap the Bush plan for the moon and remain committed to "studies" in Earth orbit..right where we've been since the last Apollo landing in 1972. This is a familiar stance; other presidents who found it inconvenient to tackle exploration beyond Earth's near neighborhood have done the same. They have put it off..procrastinated..making it somebody else's problem at some undisclosed future date while our grand technologies stagnate. But take heart: while we dither and waste our hard-fought gains, China and others are picking them up and using them to forge ahead. It may well be that we, as one of the richest nations in the world, can afford to take ourselves for granted and toss off our treasure like Kleenex. I don't think we can, but fools have "proven me wrong" before.

If it still exists at this writing, the Constellation moon program is not feasible, says the Augustine Commission, and the Obama Administration agrees. For the record, the program has test-flown the Ares 1-X, (right) a new rocket designed to be the core of the lunar effort as well as an eventual replacement for the (lamentably) soon-to-be-retired space shuttle. Obama would rather start research on yet another breed of heavy-lift rocket. He says he supports continued human spaceflight, but one is tempted to shout: "In what?" in light of the space shuttle's retirement and the Constellation program "axing." Constellation was to include the next generation of manned spacecraft for transportation both to the moon and to the International Space Station.

The President is likely to get a big fight over all this in Congress, since the thousands of jobs spaceflight brings to the various states are hanging in the balance, but the fact remains that we are in a helluvva mess. What's even more galling is that great discoveries and efforts are making space exploration more compelling than ever.

Look at a few recent headlines:

-- Ares flies successfully.

-- Deep Impact spacecraft finds clear evidence of water on the Moon.

-- NASA spacecraft sees ice on Mars.

-- NASA spacecraft detects oceans on planetary moon.

The existence of water in these places is like an invitation to keep going. Essential to life and to fuel processing, water has always been one of the long-poles in the tent. Just the weight of carrying it with us is a horribly expensive prospect; being able to use what's already there makes exploration seem manageable by contrast.

Our effortrs lagged in the 70's during that dead time between Apollo and the space shuttle. There were no manned flights for a period of years; poor funding and planning left a hole in the schedule that cost us dearly in experience and talent as skilled workers with nothing to do drifted into other pursuits. We're about to do that again with retirement of the space shuttle fleet--the final crew has been named for the last shuttle flight this fall. When it flies, about 7,000 jobs will vanish at the Kennedy Space Center alone. With nothing to replace the space plane, US astronauts will either taxi to the space station with the Russians at more than 50 million dollars per Soyuz seat or will rely on American private industry to come up with an acceptable vehicle they can hire. Of course, such a private vehicle will have to be certified to NASA safety standards. What a wonderful prospect.

Meanwhile, the Japanese have sent their first automated cargo ship to the space station. (Left) The HTV flew to space station Alpha, was grappled by the station's robotic arm and hauled to a docking port where its cargo bay was emptied.

The Chinese have been orbiting their own astronauts and say they're planning to go on to the moon.

India says it will soon launch crews to Earth oribt.

They all have ambitious plans based on technology the US worked years and spent fortunes to develop.

And now we have to decide how--or whether--to proceed.

If I had my way, we would keep two shuttles in operational readiness, flying them at least twice a year to keep flight and ground crews trained until we can use something better, whatever that may be. The shuttle was designed to service the space station and any real heavy lifting can only be accomplished by that machine.

However, I'm sure that no one in authority much cares what I think: our government has never taken the space program very seriously unless it was expedient to do so. The average lawmaker wonders if the program is just there and agrees that it does interesting things but really, in their heart of hearts, they don't know what it's good for: Is it a toy, a public relations gimmick, an experiment .. or what? Is it going to go on forever or can't we just set it aside until we can "afford" it? That's how the majority of our decision makers have viewed the American program traditionally.

But they say they want new jobs. The industry has employed some of the most talented and productive people in the world and has always returned more dollars than it spent while working with about one percent or less of the Federal budget. Because of this government's vacillation, many of those skilled people have been either laid off or have drifted into other pursuits. To compound that fracture, because young people are not attracted to a business with no stated future goal, America, where spaceflight was developed and refined, is actually short of newly trained engineers. But spaceflight is extremely labor intensive, and the business has room for a great number of skills ranging from blue collar labor through support or supply contractors to the rocket scientists themselves.

Do you want new materials and technologies? Space has poured them out just in the process of getting us where we wanted to go. NASA invention is available to anyone who'll use it. This country and others have soaked it up by the gallon.

Do you want new knowledge for the benefit of future generations? Space has rewritten the textbooks about our worlds..Earth itself out to the far reaches of the universe. To be sure, the way-out stuff has been done by robotic spacecraft--but they are built and operated by real, live human beings who live for the work they do.

And, there is an intellectual and spiritual side to spaceflight that neither this government nor the media has ever addressed adequately. Perhaps those things are embarrassing to talk about in a vulgar public forum; certainly, it seems hard for Congress to justify spending money on them. But they do exist, no matter how unsophisticated it may seem to discuss them out loud. Things of the spirit are not fodder for "talking heads."

Pay attention folks..I hear great programs flushing down a White House toilet.

Am I angry?

Damned right I am.

You should be, too.