It likely will come as a shock to most Americans when they learn that the nation that landed men on the moon and won the Cold War soon will no longer have the ability to launch people into space.

The shock is likely to be exacerbated by the knowledge that the U.S. space program will have to rely on Russian Soyuz capsules to send astronauts to the $100 billion International Space Station — buying seats on the Russian craft in the same way wealthy space tourists have done.

This stunning turn of events is the fault of woeful planning within the Bush administration, which decided to shut down the space shuttle program in 2010, knowing that the next-generation Constellation program will not be ready to fly until 2015 at the earliest.

The forced reliance on the good will of our Russian space partners comes at a most troubling time, what with the conflict in Georgia and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's growing bellicosity. Then there is the matter of China's rapidly advancing space program and the fear among some experts that the Chinese will land on the moon before the United States' targeted return in 2020.

There is little that can be done at this point, even though both presidential candidates have called for at least a partial extension of the shuttle program and for more financing to advance Constellation.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who has written of "how unwise it was for the U.S. to adopt a policy of deliberate dependence on another power," has directed agency officials to look into extending flights of the aging shuttles past 2010, but that is a potentially risky course. He also has said that any infusion of funds at this point would come too late to help launch Constellation earlier than 2015.

Our best hope is that U.S.-Russian collaboration in space somehow transcends terrestrial tensions while the nation awaits the next generation of craft for the crucial exploration of space.

REPRINTED FROM THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.