China is pushing full-bore into space with an impressive list of targeted goals by the year 2020.

The State-run chinese space program has already launched two piloted space flights in 2003 and 2005. Their next goal is a space walk in 2008, a lunar robot lander roving on the Moon in 2012 and the beginning of construction of their own ambitious orbiting space station by as early as 2020.

The space race reminiscint of the 1960’s is definitely back on. Question is… will America be up to the challenge? Over the last ten years the NASA Space Agency’s budget has been slashed and gutted to the point that they have had to re-evaluate their long range goals and seriously curtail many planned projects.

In light of China’s aggressive space campaign several Congress members including Republican congressman John Culberson are outraged over the massive cuts in NASA’s budget. Joining him in this fight are several active and retired astronauts, aerospace engineers, as well as NASA and JPL scientists and physicists. As the battles in the halls of Congres wage on, the Commerical Space Industry is poised to pick up the slack and may well be where both the US and Russia will rise as the major competitor in this new race for space.