io9, my favorite science-faction themed blog that I can not keep up with, had a fun post today about how the US needs someone like China to compete with them in order to kick the space programs in the ass.

There are a lot of links in the article worth checking out if you have the time.

io9: The U.S. Needs A Space Race With China

Who knows when the U.S. would have put a dude on the moon if Russia hadn’t put a dog in space back in 1957? The U.S. government is pretty stingy when it comes to science funding, but there’s always money for war and coping with outside threats. Space funding dropped sharply in the 1990s, and now we’re retiring our space shuttle fleet. The only recent increase in space funding was $300 million for defending U.S. satellites after China destroyed that weather satellite. It sucks that we need an outside competitor to make us take space exploration seriously again.But on the other hand, a little more competition could be healthy for everyone