It's All In How You Look At It

I'll be honest, I was a initially disappointed by - and somewhat depressed by - this story, "Russia and Japan aim for the Moon": 

It was a rare confluence — the heads of the space agencies for Europe, Canada and Russia, along with senior representatives from the space agencies of India and Japan — all up on the dais together at a hotel in Washington DC, where they were on hand on 22 May to talk about the benefits of international collaboration at the Global Space Exploration Conference.

Wait.  No NASA?  No US involvement?  I know we just retired the shuttles, I know our space program is  in some serious doldrums right now, but... no American involvement at all?

Then I read on:

Interestingly, the leader of the space agency whose headquarters is just a few blocks away was not on the stage. That’s because NASA administrator Charles Bolden was in Florida, watching the attempt by SpaceX to send its Dragon capsule to the International Space Station.

Ah.  That brings it all into perspective.

The international community, as usual, are coming together and talking.

Meanwhile, we poor, nekulturny Americans are busy getting on with doing.

In fact, doing exactly one of those "Big Government" things that the statists insist private enterprise is incapable of accomplishing.

I find that... rather comforting, actually.

Ad astra per aspera, SpaceX.  Hang in there and let's show 'em what happens when free men look to the stars and roll up their sleeves.