Next on the moon: India or China

India's first astronaut: Sell the Americans tickets aboard an Indian spaceship to the moon.

Now that the United States has abandoned manned space flight, and will scrap its Constellation program, the new race for the moon has two players: China and India.

China—with a bigger budget and a few manned flights under its belt—has to be considered the favorite. That said, India has good engineers and seems determined to plow ahead.

India’s first manned space mission is planned for 2015. At that point, the United States will have no manned flight capabilities. The shuttle will be retired; no new vehicle is even planned. Americans will be buying tickets to fly aboard Russian or private American spacecraft.

India will be flying its own astronauts. They will follow up on their unmanned accomplishments of launching satellites and even unmanned lunar missions. The Indian space agency has announced that its goal is to send people to the moon.

India’s first astronaut, Rakesh Sharma, flew aboard a Soviet spacecraft in 1984. Now, he’s looking forward to India’s own spacecraft. He has even described a vision in which an American would buy a ticket to the moon aboard an Indian spacecraft. At this point, it seems the only way an American could ever get to the moon again…at least in my lifetime.